Father Mike Schmitz

having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere love of the brethren, love one another earnestly from the heart.

You have been born anew, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God, for all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever.

That word is the good news which was preached to you.

Chapter two, the living stone and a chosen people.

So put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander.

Like newborn infants long for the pure spiritual milk that by it you may grow up to salvation for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.

Come to him, that living stone, rejected by men, but in God's sight chosen and precious.

And like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For it stands in Scripture, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and he who believes in him will not be put to shame.

To you, therefore, who believe, he is precious.

But for those who do not believe, the very stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall.

For they stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were no people, but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Live as servants of God.

Beloved, I beg you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul.

Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles so that in case they speak against you as wrongdoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.