You
Have Been Saved by Grace
Polycarp and the
Elders with him, to the Church of God sojourning in Philippi: all mercy and
peace to you, from God Almighty and Jesus Christ our Saviour.
When you welcomed
those copies of the True Love and took the opportunity of setting them forward
on their road, I rejoiced with you in Jesus Christ. The chains that bound them
were the badges of saints, the diadems of men truly chosen by our Lord and God.
I rejoiced too that your firmly rooted faith, so well-known since the earliest
times, still flourishes and bears fruit for our Lord Jesus Christ. He bore the
burden of our sins even as far as suffering death, and God
raised him up, releasing him from the pains of the underworld; you did not see
him but still you believed in him, in unspeakably glorious joy. Many desire to come into this joy,
knowing that you are saved by grace, not by works, –
not by your actions but by the will of God through Jesus Christ.
So gird up your loins and serve God in fear and
sincerity. Leave aside empty vanities and vulgar error, believing
in him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and gave him glory and a throne on his right hand, to
whom are subject all things in heaven and earth, whom everything that has
breath serves, who is coming as the judge of the living and of the dead: God
will require vengeance for his blood from any who disobey him.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of
Readings
From Saint Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians
Image
taken from Waiting for the Word
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