10th Sunday of Matthew

For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men. ¹⁰We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor. ¹¹Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. ¹²We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure. ¹³Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.

¹⁴I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. ¹⁵For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, you don’t have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News. ¹⁶I beg you therefore, be imitators of me.

When they came to the multitude, a man came to him, kneeling down to him and saying, ¹⁵“Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is epileptic and suffers grievously; for he often falls into the fire, and often into the water. ¹⁶So I brought him to your disciples, and they could not cure him.”

¹⁷Jesus answered, “Faithless and perverse generation! How long will I be with you? How long will I bear with you? Bring him here to me.” ¹⁸Jesus rebuked the demon, and it went out of him, and the boy was cured from that hour.

¹⁹Then the disciples came to Jesus privately, and said, “Why weren’t we able to cast it out?”

²⁰He said to them, “Because of your unbelief. For most certainly I tell you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. ²¹But this kind doesn’t go out except by prayer and fasting.”

²²While they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered up into the hands of men,

²³and they will kill him, and the third day he will be raised up.” They were exceedingly sorry.