Our Venerable Mother Euphrosyne.
Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients.
Ephesians 6:18-24; Luke 4:22-30.
Read Ephesians 6:18-24
Pray at all times in the Spirit.
The great battles of the Christian life are seldom lost because we lack information. We know the commandments. We know our weaknesses. We generally know what we ought to do. The battle is lost because, at the decisive moment, we attempt to fight alone.
Prayer is the admission that God is stronger than we are.
Notice that Paul writes these words in chains. He does not ask the Ephesians to pray that the chains be removed. He asks them to pray that he might speak the Gospel boldly while wearing them. There is something wonderfully Christian about this. The world says: change my circumstances and I will be happy. The Christian says: give me grace, and even these circumstances can become an instrument of God.
Paul calls himself “an ambassador in chains.” What a contradiction! Ambassadors normally wear the insignia of power; Paul wears iron. Yet Caesar, who seemed powerful, has vanished into history, while the prisoner’s words are still being proclaimed throughout the world.
This is the strange arithmetic of Christianity: weakness surrendered to God becomes strength; suffering offered to God becomes apostolate; imprisonment united to Christ becomes freedom.
And so Paul ends not with himself but with others—with Tychicus, with the brethren, with peace, love, faith, and grace.
That is the final evidence that prayer has changed a man: he becomes less occupied with his own chains and more concerned that others should know the peace of Christ.