Our Holy Father Amphilocus, Bishop of Iconium (395); Gregory, Bishop of Agrigentum; Dionysios, Patriarch of Constantinople

For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. ¹⁰You are witnesses with God how holy, righteously, and blamelessly we behaved ourselves toward you who believe. ¹¹As you know, we exhorted, comforted, and implored every one of you, as a father does his own children, ¹²to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own Kingdom and glory.

¹³For this cause we also thank God without ceasing that when you received from us the word of the message of God, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, God’s word, which also works in you who believe. ¹⁴For you, brothers, became imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus; for you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews

He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed. ³²For he will be delivered up to the Gentiles, will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit on. ³³They will scourge and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again.”

³⁴They understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they didn’t understand the things that were said.