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

when he comes in that day to be glorified in his saints and to be admired among all those who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.

¹¹To this end we also pray always for you that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire of goodness and work of faith with power, ¹²that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

¹Now, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you ²not to be quickly shaken in your mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter as if from us, saying that the day of Christ has already come.

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.”