Apostle Thaddeus of the Seventy; Avram, Archimandrite of Smolensk; Holy Martyrs Bassa and her sons Theognis, Agapios, and Pistis (4th c.)

For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God, we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly toward you. ¹³For we write no other things to you than what you read or even acknowledge, and I hope you will acknowledge to the end— ¹⁴as also you acknowledged us in part—that we are your boasting, even as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.

¹⁵In this confidence, I was determined to come first to you, that you might have a second benefit, ¹⁶and by you to pass into Macedonia, and again from Macedonia to come to you, and to be sent forward by you on my journey to Judea. ¹⁷When I therefore planned this, did I show fickleness? Or the things that I plan, do I plan according to the flesh, that with me there should be the “Yes, yes” and the “No, no?” ¹⁸But as God is faithful, our word toward you was not “Yes and no.” ¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me, Silvanus, and Timothy—was not “Yes and no,” but in him is “Yes.” ²⁰For however many are the promises of God, in him is the “Yes.” Therefore also through him is the “Amen”, to the glory of God through us.

He went up into the mountain and called to himself those whom he wanted, and they went to him. ¹⁴He appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach ¹⁵and to have authority to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons: ¹⁶Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); ¹⁷James the son of Zebedee; and John, the brother of James, (whom he called Boanerges, which means, Sons of Thunder); ¹⁸Andrew; Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; Thomas; James, the son of Alphaeus; Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot;

¹⁹and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. Then he came into a house. ²⁰The multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. ²¹When his friends heard it, they went out to seize him; for they said, “He is insane.”