Our Venerable Father Eumenes, Bishop of Gortyna, Wonderworker.
Post-feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients.
Ephesians 4:17-25; Mark 12:1-12.
Read Ephesians 4:17-25
What did it cost to follow Christ in ancient Ephesus? How would a Christian have heard today’s verses? Religious diversity did not guarantee tolerance for those who rejected the gods. Artemis’s temple was a wonder of the world, her cult entwined with commerce, civic pride, and spiritual identity. Choosing Christ could mean public betrayal.
Acts records how Demetrius, a silversmith whose trade Paul’s preaching threatened, stirred the city into a riot. For about two hours, a crowd screamed: “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” The Gospel threatened business.
Imagine living there with your family. Want to earn a living? Trade associations and business relationships could involve pagan worship, sacrificial meals, and libations. Refusal could bring suspicion, lost opportunities, cooled friendships, and closed doors.
Sexual immorality could pass for ordinary life. Becoming Christian meant rejecting practices you once accepted. You became an outsider in your own city, still feeling the pull of everything you had abandoned.
Then comes a letter from an apostle in chains: put off your old self and put on the new. Today people speak of “finding themselves.” Paul insists that their former selves must be surrendered. The desires they trusted had deceived them. Their thinking needed renewal.
That command reached into everything: business, the treatment of women and children, conversations with neighbors, conduct behind closed doors. Refusing Artemis already brought hardship. Paul demanded that the pagan habits within their hearts must go.
Yet his command carried a magnificent promise: God was creating a new humanity in righteousness and holiness. They could become people their former lives had never taught them to imagine. Falsehood must yield to truth, for they now belonged to one another in Christ.
What we hear with boredom struck them like thunder. The old life could no longer govern them. Following Christ meant accepting the cost of becoming new, even when the surrounding world demanded they remain exactly as they were.