They became back-biters, slanderers, impious, insolent, boastful. They devised new sins. They disobeyed their parents.

This, indeed, is what he says in the Book of Hosea-'I will call those my People who were not my People, and her my beloved who was not beloved.

If you were cut off from your natural stock--a wild olive-- and were grafted, contrary to the course of nature, upon a good olive, much more will they--the natural branches--be grafted back into their parent tree.

The very purpose for which Christ died and came back to life was this--that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living.

I beg you, then, Brothers, by Jesus Christ, our Lord, and by the love inspired by the Spirit, to join me in earnest prayer to God on my behalf.