- Let your love be sincere. Loathe what is evil and hold fast to what is good.
- It is the Lord, your God, whom you are to follow. You must fear him and observe his commandments and obey what he tells you and serve him and hold fast to him.
- Take heed to follow the commandments and the laws that Moses, the servant of the Lord, gave you: to love the Lord, your God, and to walk in his ways and to observe his commandments, holding fast to him and serving him with all your heart and all your soul.
- But from the very beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh.’ And so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
- The Lord God then formed a woman out of the rib that he had taken from the man. He brought her before the man.
The man said,
“This one is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called woman
because she was taken from man.”
This is why a man leaves his father and his mother and joins with a wife, and the two become one flesh. - He replied, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said: ‘That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh’? And so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
- You have already been cleansed
by the word I have spoken to you. - Many shall be purified, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked will persist in their evil ways.
- Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a resolute spirit within me. - Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you waverers.
- However, if we confess our sins,
he who is faithful and just
will forgive our sins
and cleanse us from all wrongdoing. - Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her in order to sanctify her by cleansing her with water and the word.
- However, whoever lives by the truth
comes to the light
so that it may be clearly seen
that his deeds have been done in God. - Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. You received without payment; give in the same way.
- Wash yourselves and become clean;
remove your evil deeds
far from my sight.
Cease to do evil. - Have mercy on me, O God,
in accord with your kindness;
in your abundant compassion
wipe away my offenses.
Wash me completely from my guilt,
and cleanse me from my sin. - Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from anything that can defile flesh or spirit, and thereby make our holiness perfect in the fear of God.
- The precepts of the Lord are right,
causing the heart to rejoice.
The commands of the Lord are clear,
giving light to the eyes. - Ever since the creation of the world the invisible attributes of God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly understood and perceived through the things he has made. Therefore, the conduct of these people is inexcusable.
- He said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not realize that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not into the heart but into the stomach and is discharged into the sewer?” Thus, he pronounced all foods clean.
May the Lord, our God, be with us, just as he was with our fathers; may he not leave us or abandon us.