NOTES for Pe1 3:1-12

Speaking of relationships with neighbors, including within families made up of Christians and pagans, Peter points to them as an opportunity to learn both communion with God and life in the Kingdom. Strictly speaking, the apostle looks the same way at all social life in general: for him it is only a means for the main thing, for the practice of spiritual life. And the family is the place where conditions for such practice arise that are impossible anywhere else. Indeed, all other relationships are more or less episodic, while relationships in the family are regular and systematic.

Besides, if the issue is, for example, a church community, then there, in conditions where religious enthusiasm inevitably comes to the forefront, much in relationships is as if blurred and goes into the shadows, especially when members of the community do not live together and meet regularly but only for a short time. The family is another matter. In a family people rest, and often also from what some call "spiritual life."

It is then, when a person rests from a supposed "spiritual life," which in fact is from his own religiosity that sometimes becomes wearisome, that he becomes himself; and then his true spiritual level becomes obvious to everyone living with him, and sometimes to himself as well. The family thus turns out to be an excellent place for spiritual practice, and the apostle understands this perfectly. Just as he also understands how great the temptation is, on the wave of religious enthusiasm that often accompanies conversion, to leave a "pagan" family and look for something more "spiritual."

Peter insists that spirituality begins with accepting a person as he is. Only in this way can one hope that someday this person will become different. This does not mean that a Christian must imitate those around him and for their sake cease to be what he is. But he also has no right to demand from others that they immediately cease to be what they are.

Here, strictly speaking, is the same acceptance of the givenness of the human world of which the apostle has already spoken when he touched on the question of the Christian's attitude toward social institutions and arrangements. In the end, God acts in the same way. He does not demand of us that we be ideal people. He accepts us as we are in order to make us what He wants to see us become. Only in this way can one help a person enter the Kingdom. And this is the main task.

The twelve verses from the First Catholic Epistle of the apostle Peter that we read today seem like a very large passage because of the abundance of exceptionally important things the apostle says. The most important, perhaps, are the apostle's words about what our baptism is. The stereotypes of our consciousness force us to relate to baptism, how shall we put it... in different ways. Sometimes for us it is a rite of initiation, or something like a vaccination against illnesses and misfortunes.

That is why it is so important to hear what the apostle Peter says: baptism, according to his words, is not the washing away of bodily uncleanness, that is, it has nothing to do with ritual purity. The apostle states that the main thing in baptism is the pledge to God of a good conscience. The Greek word here means not merely a promise, but a promise made solemnly, a vow. For various reasons, for most of us this event itself, the making of baptismal vows, passes unnoticed. Partly for that reason we do not keep these vows in memory, the "pledge to God of a good conscience." But the apostle Peter says that precisely this baptism, this promise or oath to Christ, saves us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

No less important is that everything else, apart from a good conscience, remains offstage. Salvation is given by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and by nothing else. To receive it, one must promise God to have a good conscience and fulfill that promise. First, such Christ-centeredness is important in itself, because anything that claims the central place in our life apart from the Son of God Himself is an idol. Second, this view of the apostle contains within itself all the countless variety of forms of Christian calling.

In this connection it is also significant that the apostle speaks about our lot. He speaks of the persecutions that fall to Christians with remarkable calm, as something fully understandable to him. He grounds this in the fact that a good conscience before God draws every Christian onto the Way of the Cross, which the Head of the Church also walked. But, following the Teacher and Lord, the apostle Peter says to us: do not be afraid; this is the way of life.

The Apostle Peter wrote his catholic Epistle around AD 63, at the very beginning of the period of persecution of Christians. At that time, the new people of God, chosen and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, entered upon the way of the Cross in following their Teacher. The apostle therefore writes about the meaning of suffering and relates the sufferings of the faithful to the saving suffering of Christ Himself. Tradition tells us that around the time this epistle was written, at the beginning of the persecutions in Rome, the apostle left the city at the insistence of the Christians, and on the road just outside the city walls he met Christ. “Lord, where are You going?” the Apostle Peter asked Him, and the Lord replied that He was going to Rome to be crucified there once again. On hearing this, Peter returned to Rome and suffered martyrdom there. A church called Domine quo vadis (Lord, where are You going?) was later built at the site of this encounter, and to this day it houses the stone upon which Christ’s feet stood.

Today’s passage from Peter’s Epistle seems to contain the apostle’s thoughts about precisely this. The apostle says that we must always be ready to give an answer for our hope, and explains that suffering for good deeds, when it is given to us by the will of the Creator, offers us an opportunity to meet and be united with Christ. The apostle writes that salvation itself was accomplished because Christ suffered innocently for our sins. The meaning of the apostle’s words is that our innocent suffering is mysteriously connected with Christ’s saving Passion. The Apostle Paul would express this thought as follows: “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for His Body” (Col 1:24). In the Epistle to the Romans, in the passage read during the sacrament of Baptism, he adds: “we were buried with Him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).