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

For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. ²For most certainly in this we groan, longing to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, ³if indeed being clothed, we will not be found naked. ⁴For indeed we who are in this tent do groan, being burdened, not that we desire to be unclothed, but that we desire to be clothed, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. ⁵Now he who made us for this very thing is God, who also gave to us the down payment of the Spirit.

⁶Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord; ⁷for we walk by faith, not by sight. ⁸We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. ⁹Therefore also we make it our aim, whether at home or absent, to be well pleasing to him. ¹⁰For we must all be revealed before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may receive the things in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great multitude met him. ³⁸Behold, a man from the crowd called out, saying, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only born child. ³⁹Behold, a spirit takes him, he suddenly cries out, and it convulses him so that he foams; and it hardly departs from him, bruising him severely. ⁴⁰I begged your disciples to cast it out, and they couldn’t.”

⁴¹Jesus answered, “Faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.”

⁴²While he was still coming, the demon threw him down and convulsed him violently. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.

⁴³They were all astonished at the majesty of God. But while all were marveling at all the things which Jesus did, he said to his disciples,