First Reading

Reading from the second letter of the Apostle Saint Paul to Timothy

2 Timothy 1, 1-3. 6-12

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved son. I wish you grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord.

When I remember you night and day in my prayers, I give thanks to God, whom I serve with a clear conscience, as I learned from my ancestors.

For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you received when I laid my hands on you. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power, love, and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God. He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works, but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed preacher and apostle and teacher.

That is why I am suffering these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know him in whom I have believed and am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.

Gospel

Reading from the holy Gospel according to Saint Mark

Mark 12, 18-27

At that time, some Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. So the second married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection, when they arise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.”

Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”