Happy Feast Day!
Eighty and six years
have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I
blaspheme my King who saved Me?....I bless Thee for deigning me worthy of this
day and this hour that I may be among Thy martyrs and drink the cup of my Lord
Jesus Christ.
Let us, therefore, foresake the vanity of the crowd and
their false teachings, and turn back to the word delivered to us from the
beginning.
...by grace ye are saved, not of works,' but by the will of God
through Jesus Christ . . . If we please Him in this present world, we shall
receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will
raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, 'we shall
also reign together with Him,' provided only we believe . . .
If you imagine for a moment that I would do that, then I
think you pretend that you don't know who I am. Hear it plainly. I am a
Christian.
If anyone does not refrain from the love of money, he will
be defiled by idolatry and so be judged as if he were one of the heathen.
Be all of you subject one to another having your conduct
blameless among the Gentiles, that you may both receive praise for your good works,
and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name
of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it
also in your own conduct...