Post-feast of Theophany; the Holy Martyrs Hermylus and Stratonicus (313-24)
1 Peter 4:1-11; Mark 12:28-37
Read 1 Peter 4:1-11
Christ is baptised!
St. Peter reminds us today that no matter what kind of corruptive behaviour may be occurring around us, or within our society, we are to stay distant from soul-destroying activities. What may be deemed normal behaviour by those of the world, the type of behaviour driven by sinful inclinations—which St. Peter calls the human passions—Christians do not accept for we live by the will of God and not by what feels ‘good’. In the first century, when today’s epistle was written, Christians were so out of place that Gentiles—that is those who were not Jewish or those who did not know the true God—were dumbfounded at Christian counter-cultural behaviour. Godly virtue was so strange to so many that Christians who did not participate in societies licentiousness were strangers from another world.
As Christians, we do not live to please our own flesh, but we live to please the Lord by giving glory to God through Jesus Christ. That means we live a life of purity and self-sacrificial love; in other words, avoid that which is sinful and, soul corrupting, and focus on tangible acts of love for they ‘cover a multitude of sins’. St. Clement of Rome reminds us that ‘without love we cannot please God.” (Letter to the Corinthians). St. Leo the Great says, ‘Nothing is stronger against the wiles of the devil, dearly beloved, then the kindness, mercy and generosity of love, through which every sin is either avoided or conquered.’ (Sermons 74.5).