20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia; Our Holy Father Simon the Outpourer of Myrrh, Founder of Simonopetra Monastery, Mt Athos (1287); Holy Martyr Glycerus

For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. ²Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins? ³But in those sacrifices there is a yearly reminder of sins. ⁴For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. ⁵Therefore when he comes into the world, he says, “You didn’t desire sacrifice and offering, but you prepared a body for me. ⁶You had no pleasure in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin. ⁷Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.’”

⁸Previously saying, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you didn’t desire, neither had pleasure in them” (those which are offered according to the law), ⁹then he has said, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He takes away the first, that he may establish the second, ¹⁰by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

¹¹Every priest indeed stands day by day serving and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, ¹²but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God, ¹³from that time waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet. ¹⁴For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. ¹⁵The Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,

¹⁶“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days,” says the Lord, “I will put my laws on their heart, I will also write them on their mind;” then he says, ¹⁷“I will remember their sins and their iniquities no more.”

¹⁸Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.

Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, ²⁶“If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross and come after me, can’t be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? ²⁹Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation and isn’t able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, ³⁰saying, ‘This man began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ ³¹Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy and asks for conditions of peace. ³³So therefore, whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple.

³⁴“Salt is good, but if the salt becomes flat and tasteless, with what do you season it? ³⁵It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”