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

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the assembly of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: ²Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³We are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers, even as it is appropriate, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love of each and every one of you toward one another abounds, ⁴so that we ourselves boast about you in the assemblies of God for your perseverance and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which you endure. ⁵This is an obvious sign of the righteous judgment of God, to the end that you may be counted worthy of God’s Kingdom, for which you also suffer. ⁶For it is a righteous thing with God to repay affliction to those who afflict you, ⁷and to give relief to you who are afflicted with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, ⁸punishing those who don’t know God, and to those who don’t obey the Good News of our Lord Jesus, ⁹who will pay the penalty: eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, ¹⁰when 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.

When he went into the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on a Sabbath to eat bread, they were watching him.

¹²He also said to the one who had invited him, “When you make a dinner or a supper, don’t call your friends, nor your brothers, nor your kinsmen, nor rich neighbors, or perhaps they might also return the favor, and pay you back. ¹³But when you make a feast, ask the poor, the maimed, the lame, or the blind; ¹⁴and you will be blessed, because they don’t have the resources to repay you. For you will be repaid in the resurrection of the righteous.”

¹⁵When one of those who sat at the table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is he who will feast in God’s Kingdom!”