Prophet Zachariah and Elizabeth; Holy Hieromartyr Athanasius of Brest-Litovsk (1649); Holy Martyrs Abda the bishop, Hormizd and Sunin of Persia (4th c)

For you see your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble; ²⁷but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong. ²⁸God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that don’t exist, that he might bring to nothing the things that exist, ²⁹that no flesh should boast before God. ³⁰Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, ³¹that, as it is written, “He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.”

¹When I came to you, brothers, I didn’t come with excellence of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. ²For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. ⁴My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the tombs of the righteous, ³⁰and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ ³¹Therefore you testify to yourselves that you are children of those who killed the prophets. ³²Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. ³³You serpents, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna? ³⁴Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, ³⁵that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom you killed between the sanctuary and the altar. ³⁶Most certainly I tell you, all these things will come upon this generation.

³⁷“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! ³⁸Behold, your house is left to you desolate. ³⁹For I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”