Fast-Free Day
Gospel Reading
Mark 13:9-13
⁹ But watch yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils. You will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them. ¹⁰ The Good News must first be preached to all the nations. ¹¹ When they lead you away and deliver you up, don’t be anxious beforehand, or premeditate what you will say, but say whatever will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. ¹² “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. ¹³ You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end, the same will be saved.
Epistle Reading
2 Peter 1:20-2:9
²⁰ knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. ²¹ For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit. ¹ But false prophets also arose among the people, as false teachers will also be among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. ² Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. ³ In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn’t linger, and their destruction will not slumber. ⁴ For if God didn’t spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; ⁵ and didn’t spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; ⁶ and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live in an ungodly way; ⁷ and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked ⁸ (for that righteous man dwelling among them, was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds): ⁹ the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment;