“PETER'S EPISTALATORY GOSPEL 1”
1 Peter 1
Lent Midweek 1: 1 March Anno Domini 2023
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
When Peter greets you, as he does in his Epistle, you are being addressed by Jesus. Peter is an Apostle, an ambassador and “sent one”—send by Christ. And though you are not strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia and Bithynia, you do appear to be strangers to this current dark and dying age and its legions of apostates, heretics, and pagans.
Peter calls you elect! And you are. You are here, not in Augsburg’s nave, but in Jesus’ sheepfold, because Christ has elected you by the foreknowledge of God The Father. Your Father Who art in heaven loved you before the beginning of time; loved you from eternity and chose to save you in time, at a point, by His Son’s work, suffering, and death.
The Holy Ghost has made you all holy not because of anything in you but due to the obedience of Christ (His active work of Law keeping) and by the “sprinkling of The Blood of Jesus.” That’s why Peter preaches to you during Lent “Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied!”
Are you weighed down and sad. Is Lent too much for you because the other months of the long year are Lent enough? Does your carnal old-self preoccupy itself in mammon and cares of material nature?
Jesus has “begotten” you (birthed you in living waters) “unto a lively hope by (His own) resurrection…from the dead!”
Yes, your bodies, brains, reflexes, energy levels are diminishing, are rotting away with age and disease, but God through Peter tells you, you are “incorruptible, and undefiled, and…fadeth not away.” Believe! Believe him when he says heaven is your home.
Don’t worry that you are weak and that you can’t seem to be brave and strong enough to confront everything that you face. You are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation!” This is now and always being revealed to you for this is “the last time,” the end.
So when, not if, when, you struggle and sorrow and have to deal with sadness and setbacks—Lent is a long, dry, hot, lonely, and tiring journey—know and believe that Christ takes joy in your faith! Jesus is well-pleased with the gift of His Faith which He has crowned you with. Your faith, i.e., your status with God, is “much more precious than…gold that perishes.
But it remains Lent. In the wilderness you don’t “see” paradise. In trials and stress, you don’t “see” (feel) peace. Under the cross you don’t see with the eyes the face of Christ Jesus.
You are tried with fire but you are baptized in water and The Word. Water quenches and extinguishes fire and The Word produces love in you. You do believe and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Faith is the evidence of things unseen!
Abraham spoke of Christ as did Jacob and Moses and Isaiah. They all spoke of you as well, that God’s Grace would come unto you. The Spirit in the Prophets testified beforehand the suffering of Christ—the Lenten Journey of Jesus to Calvary, and the glory that should follow—the Victory on the cross that would open Heaven’s Canaan. Their ministry was continued by Saint Peter by the command of Christ. The fullness of The Gospel—God in The Flesh of The Nazarene Rabbi—crucified and risen—is reported to you by Peter and his fellow Apostles, recorded by the blessed Evangelists.
From that long Lenten march…from the banishment at Eden until Malachi put down his pen and silence reigned for 400 years, the angels desired to look into God’s great Sacrament. You have received it—God in The Face and Body/Blood of Jesus. Now that is Mana, that is daily bread for your Lenten journey.
So, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober. Pray. Fast. Give alms to the poor. As obedient children do not indulge in lusts of the flesh but receive the gifts of The Lord. He has made you Holy. Be Holy.
Have some fear! What is the First Commandment?
You are here this evening—saved.
The precious Blood of Christ takes away your blemishes and spots. This is not a vain tradition but a Godly tradition of His Church, which is His Son.
These are the last times!
All things that have been foreordained before the foundation of the world are happening—now!
Love one another with your purified hearts and souls.
And when you don’t feel the love in return; when you don’t see it; when all you seem to experience is “change and decay in all around I see,” Jesus The God/Man is with you nonetheless in His Word.
Peter to you during Lent 2023: “the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but The Word of The Lord endureth forever.”
“The Gospel is preached unto you.”
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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