Bible Reading: Wisdom 17: 8-15

For they who undertook to banish fears and terrors from the sick soul themselves sickened with a ridiculous fear. For even though no monstrous thing frightened them, they shook at the passing of insects and the hissing of reptiles, and perished trembling, reluctant to face even the air that they could nowhere escape. For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation, and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortune. For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason; and the more one's expectation is of itself uncertain, the more one makes of not knowing the cause that brings on torment. So they, during that night, powerless though it was, that had come upon them from the recesses of a powerless netherworld, while all sleeping the same sleep, were partly smitten by fearsome apparitions and partly stricken by their soul's surrender; for fear came upon them, sudden and unexpected.