Our Venerable Father Paisius Velichkovsky (1794); Begin Nativity Fast; Guria, Shamuna, and Habib, Martyrs and Confessors of Edessa

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ according to the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope, ²to Timothy, my true child in faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

³As I urged you when I was going into Macedonia, stay at Ephesus that you might command certain men not to teach a different doctrine, ⁴and not to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than God’s stewardship, which is in faith. ⁵But the goal of this command is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith, ⁶from which things some, having missed the mark, have turned away to vain talking, ⁷desiring to be teachers of the law, though they understand neither what they say nor about what they strongly affirm.

When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him.

¹²He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. ¹³But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; ¹⁴and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”

¹⁵When one of those who sat at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is he who will feast in God’s Kingdom!”