The apostle Peter answers a question we often ask: how should we live as Christians? How can we keep the commandments? This answer is simple, even simpler than one can imagine: we must be ready for trials, keep watch, and, above all, set our hope completely on the grace of God! This is what Saint Therese of the Child Jesus later spoke about: infinite trust is the road into the Kingdom that is open to everyone. Having placed all our hope on His grace, we truly can live in His light, but only if we genuinely want this and sincerely open our heart to Him, knowing that He can accomplish everything, even what is impossible for us...

Today's reading from the Letter of the holy apostle Peter is at once a prayer of praise and a sermon. Because Peter begins his letter with prayer, this prayer becomes communal, for the addressees, reading it, also pray together with the apostle. The apostle Peter glorifies the Lord, who has given us a special inheritance: the inheritance of salvation. The remarkable feature of this inheritance is that all of us can make use of it already on earth, for we all receive the grace of God, and at the same time, although we are free to renounce it, we cannot accidentally lose it or squander it, for it is kept for us in heaven!

The apostle calls us to rejoice. One can, of course, snort and say: "It is easy for you to rejoice if you grieve 'a little'! But I grieve a lot, so I have no time for joy." Yet the sufferings that Peter and all believers endured in those times were clearly no less than ours, for Christians were persecuted almost everywhere, and the living conditions of many of them were far from comfortable. Peter says that we grieve "a little" only in comparison with the joy that awaits us in heaven and has already been given to us here, in communion with the Living Lord. This joy, "inexpressible and full of glory," is greater than any suffering of ours.

Here is the answer to the question of how freedom and grace relate to one another. Clearly, one could discuss this at length in philosophical language and perhaps explain it in learned terms. But the apostle Peter gives a simple answer in simple language: he says that we are kept for salvation “by the power of God through faith.” This means that without our faith the Lord does not act in us, yet our faith alone—without His power—does not act either! Salvation is possible for a human being only through the participation of both God and the human person.