James 3.11-4.6 (Epistle)

11Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water? 12Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

13Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth. 15This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. 16For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed. 17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

1Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? 2You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. 3You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”? 6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

1 Corinthians 4.9-16 (Epistle, Forefeast of Theophany)

9For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men. 10We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor. 11Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. 12We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure. 13Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.

14I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. 15For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, you don’t have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News. 16I beg you therefore, be imitators of me.

Luke 18.15-17, 26-30 (Gospel)

15They were also bringing their babies to him, that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16Jesus summoned them, saying, “Allow the little children to come to me, and don’t hinder them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these. 17Most certainly, I tell you, whoever doesn’t receive God’s Kingdom like a little child, he will in no way enter into it.”

26Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?”

27But he said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”

28Peter said, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”

29He said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there is no one who has left house, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children, for God’s Kingdom’s sake, 30who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the world to come, eternal life.”

John 1.18-28 (Gospel, Forefeast of Theophany)

18No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.

19This is John’s testimony, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?”

20He declared, and didn’t deny, but he declared, “I am not the Christ.”

21They asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.”

22They said therefore to him, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

23He said, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

24The ones who had been sent were from the Pharisees. 25They asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

26John answered them, “I baptize in water, but among you stands one whom you don’t know. 27He is the one who comes after me, who is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to loosen.” 28These things were done in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing.