NOTES for Pe1 1:3-9

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.

Peter describes an interesting chain: from faith to what we call by the Greek word ἀρετή, from it - to the knowledge, from knowledge - to what we could call in English self-restraint or self-control, and after - to constance and godliness, followed by the brotherly kindness and charity. What does the Apostle really mean? The Greek word ἀρετή is usually translated as "virtue", but it is not about virtues of the good deeds or of good properties of the soul. The word ἀρετή means above all, the desire to follow the principles leading to good, roughly what is called in the yahviste and Jewish language the aspiration to righteousness. As seen, without such an aspiration, a Christian cannot have a normal spiritual life.

This aspiration helps the seeker to acquire the knowledge (the yahviste believer or the Jew after the captivity would call it "wisdom"), that helps the seeker of the right way to stay on it. And, if the seeker of the right way succeeds to master this "knowledge", which should rather be called the ability or skill (the Greek corresponding word admits such an understanding), it acquires what in the Judaism is called the internal Torah: each of his acts, every word and every making choice stop being random or spontaneous, they are at first evaluated on the conformity of the Torah and the commandments given by God, and only after that they are said or made. The apostle who wrote in Greek, used for the description of such an internal state of the Christian the word, that we could translate as "restraint" or "self-control" (the word "temperance" received in Christian vocabulary a specific meaning, a little bit different, although in its initial meaning, it would have probably also fit).

When the skill of such restraint or self-control appears to the seeker of the right way, we can say that the internal Torah have became an integral part of his spiritual life, he finds what the Apostle calls “godliness”. Only now, in fact it is possible to speak about the brotherly kindness, about such a relationship to the brothers, that can be called charity, when each, with whom we have to communicate, independently of his behavior and his relationship to you, you wish him only good.

And only after that one can speak about the charity, about which the Savior spoke to his followers in the Last Supper: He spoke about charity, as about the environment and the space of the Kingdom, which can exist in the Christian meetings, as this Kingdom manifested to the world, just as long as in the relationships between the members of the community there is a brotherly kindness. Like this the apostle describes the way to Church and the way to the Kingdom: from the desire of a righteous life till moment, when the life of the Kingdom is revealed in all its plenitude to the seeker.

The call of the apostle "to suffer a bit" sounds, at first sight, a little bit strange. Of course, the fact that sufferings are inevitable, Jesus Himself warned His followers, and in the time before the Christian era it was known that the way of righteousness, in general, if it is strewed by something, in any cases, not roses. But the inevitability of suffering is one thing, and joy received from it – is another. The first one is inevitable; we could consider the second as a kind of manifestation of religious masochism confirming the opinion rather widely spread about Christianity, as a religion of suffering. However, Christianity is not at all a religion; it is life with Christ in His Kingdom. And the faithfulness to Christ is the base of this life, without which, it is impossible and inconceivable.

But how to understand, if we are really faithful to Christ, or do we consider as faithfulness our own intellectual conviction, emotional lift and religious exaltation? The best control here, turn out exactly the persecutions and the other trials connected to our faith. And the problem is not in a certain heroic romanticism, either in a desire of martyr's or confessional crown, but rather in the fact that in the moments of trials, generally, in the place of the emotional ascent comes the decline, the religious ecstasy runs out, and even the intellectual conviction turns out often powerless.

And here is, the relationships of the Kingdom remain a reality in any circumstance, if, of course, it is about real relationships, and not imaginary. And that is why faithfulness kept and carried through the trials, is, according to the word of the apostle, more precious than the cleaned gold. For, one can say with certainty of such faithfulness that is the true. Not because the man, who possesses it, withstood everything, but because he belongs to the Kingdom.

Peter, like James, addresses the brothers as exiles scattered throughout different lands. Once again, the comparison between Christians and Jews living in the Diaspora naturally suggests itself. But Christians face not only life scattered among other peoples with different customs and beliefs, but also following Christ among their fellow countrymen and relatives, those closest to them, from whom they have suddenly been divided by a wall of incomprehension. Yet while the Old Testament Church was called to become a distinct people set apart, Christians are called to become a close-knit community while remaining part of the peoples to which they belong, and to go to their fellows with the proclamation of the Gospel. We are called chosen, and this election must not become a cause for self-exaltation; there is no merit of ours in being chosen, but it is a reason to be grateful to God.

The value and authenticity of faith are tested by trials. Overcoming temptations not only strengthens the person being tempted but also makes that person’s faith more steadfast. The test is necessary in order to see whether this truly is faith that transforms a person or merely a set of theoretical ideas.