Chapter XXIX.—“Nothing Common or Unclean.”

Therefore, when our mother had risen from her sleep, Peter began to address her, saying:  “I wish you to know, O woman, an observance of our religion.  We worship one God, who made the world, and we keep His law, in which He commands us first of all to worship Him, and to reverence His name, to honour our parents, and to preserve chastity and uprightness.  But this also we observe, not to have a common table with Gentiles, unless when they believe, and on the reception of the truth are baptized, and consecrated by a certain threefold invocation of the blessed name; and then we eat with them.⁸⁰⁰⁸⁰⁰    [Comp. Homily XIII. 4.—R.]  Otherwise, even if it were a father or a mother, or wife, or sons, or brothers, we cannot have a common table with them.  Since, therefore, we do this for the special cause of religion, let it not seem hard to you that your son cannot eat with you, until you have the same judgment of the faith that he has.”