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.”
Ephesians 2.4-10
(Epistle, St. Theodore)
4But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us,
5even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
6and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus;
8for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9not of works, that no one would boast.
10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
Mark 11.22-26
(Gospel)
22Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.
23For most certainly I tell you, whoever may tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and doesn’t doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening, he shall have whatever he says.
24Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them.
25Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions.
26But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions.”
Matthew 10.16-22
(Gospel, St. Theodore)
16“Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
17But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you.
18Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations.
19But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say.
20For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
21“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.
22You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved.