Thursday, 5 November 2026

Fast-Free Day

Gospel Reading

Luke 11:47-12:1

⁴⁷ Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. ⁴⁸ So you testify and consent to the works of your fathers. For they killed them, and you build their tombs. ⁴⁹ Therefore also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles; and some of them they will kill and persecute, ⁵⁰ that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; ⁵¹ from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.’ Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation. ⁵² Woe to you lawyers! For you took away the key of knowledge. You didn’t enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in, you hindered.” ⁵³ As he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be terribly angry, and to draw many things out of him; ⁵⁴ lying in wait for him, and seeking to catch him in something he might say, that they might accuse him. ¹ Meanwhile, when a multitude of many thousands had gathered together, so much so that they trampled on each other, he began to tell his disciples first of all, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.


Epistle Reading

1 Thessalonians 2:9-14

⁹ For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God. ¹⁰ You are witnesses with God, how holy, righteously, and blamelessly we behaved ourselves toward you who believe. ¹¹ As you know, we exhorted, comforted, and implored every one of you, as a father does his own children, ¹² to the end that you should walk worthily of God, who calls you into his own Kingdom and glory. ¹³ For this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when you received from us the word of the message of God, you accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also works in you who believe. ¹⁴ For you, brothers, became imitators of the assemblies of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus; for you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews;