Salvation

Saint Peter exhorts us to embrace virtue. We have been invested with a divine power by virtue of our baptism. We therefore have everything necessary for living a life of genuine piety. This is part of our two-fold responsibility toward our Creator. Through the knowledge of Christ Himself who has called us to be His own, we have the strength to fulfill our responsibility.

Saint Peter says we must embrace virtue with a lively faith. Since we have left a world corrupted by lust to become sharers in the divine nature, we must practice self-control. Self control leads to perseverance. Perseverance leads to piety. Piety in turn leads to charity. Charity leads to love.

We thus fulfill the second part of our duty toward God, namely to love. Saint Peter says that these qualities bear fruit in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. If we lack these qualities we possess a spiritual blindness.

In Christ,

Rev. Jeffery A. Fasching