In today's reading the apostle Peter calls us to love the Word of God as a newborn infant loves milk. For an infant, loving milk is natural; more than that, he loves nothing else, because milk is his only food! So what - should the Bible be our only source of information? From today on, should we read nothing except the Bible and send all books to the recycling pile? Or should we ignore the words of the apostle Peter and choose the information that seems most suitable to us at the moment?

It is doubtful that the apostle Peter meant to say that the Word of God is the only word to which one should listen and which one should hear. But he certainly meant that His word must be more important to us than any other word. After all, the Bible does not give us exhaustive information on every existing question (for example, questions of theoretical grammar are not addressed in it). But if there is a contradiction between some philosophical theory I find appealing and the Word of God, I choose the Word of God; otherwise I am not a Christian. The same applies to questions of morals and ethics: the criterion of the truth of any statement is the Word; it is precisely the pure milk and true food for us.

Stones come in different kinds. Living ones, for example. We know that Christ is the cornerstone. We also know that He called the apostle Peter a rock. Today the apostle Peter reminds us that each of us is a living stone, and from these stones the Church of God is being built.

How, then, is it being built? By itself? In a certain sense, yes: the stones themselves are being joined into a spiritual house, as the apostle Peter says. They themselves "build themselves into" the Church! They? We do. We ourselves build the Church, finding our own place in it.

By calling Christians a "royal priesthood" and "a people for His own possession," the apostle thereby reminds them of the chief task of the Church, which, as we can see, consists first of all in bearing witness to the reality of the Kingdom that has already entered our world and is transforming it. Of course, the "excellence of the One who called you" refers to Christ Himself; otherwise this expression cannot be understood. But if witness to Christ is genuine, it will inevitably be first of all witness to the Kingdom that He brought into the world. Properly speaking, as Christians we could not bear witness to the world about anything else.

Of course, each of us will surely have something connected with our own tradition, cultural and religious. But witness to our tradition will no longer be our witness as Christians. It may be our witness as Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, or representatives of one more among the many religions that grew out of Christianity. Yet such witness has no direct relation to Christ or to the Kingdom. At best it can only be our historical and cultural interpretation of Christianity.

But Jesus does not offer us any interpretations. He offers us only Himself and the Kingdom that He brought into the world. And if we truly are, according to the apostle's word, "a holy people," that is, people who have a relation to this Kingdom, then only Christ and the Kingdom can and must be the meaning of our witness. Otherwise we will very quickly cease to be what the apostle calls us to be.