20,000 Martyrs of Nicomedia; Our Holy Father Simon the Outpourer of Myrrh, Founder of Simonopetra Monastery, Mt Athos (1287); Holy Martyr Glycerus

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. ⁸For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days are coming”, says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; ⁹not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord. ¹⁰“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord: “I will put my laws into their mind; I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ¹¹They will not teach every man his fellow citizen and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from their least to their greatest. ¹²For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.”

¹³In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first obsolete. But that which is becoming obsolete and grows aged is near to vanishing away.

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.”