The holy great-martyr Euphemia was raised by her devout Christian parents. Her father, Philophronus, was a senator. UNder the emperor Diocletian, when the Proconsul Priscus held a feast and offered sacrifice to Ares in Chalcedon, forty-nine Christians avoided this sacrificial offering and hid themselves. However, they were discovered and brought before Priscus. Among them was St. Euphemia. For nineteen consecutive days, Priscus imposed various tortures on them. On the twentieth day he separated Euphemia from the others and began to flatter her for her beauty. As his flattery was in vain, he ordered that the virgin be tortured again. First, they tortured her on the wheel, but an angel of God appeared to Euphemia and shattered the wheel. Then they threw her into a fiery furnace, but she was preserved by the power of God. Upon seeing this, two soldiers, Victor and Sosthenes, came to believe in Christ. Euphemia was then thrown into a pit filled with water and every kind of poisonous vermin; but she made the sign of the Cross over the water and remained unharmed. She was finally thrown to the wild beasts and, with a prayer of thanksgiving to God, gave up her spirit in the year 303. She is also commemorated on July 11.
Your lamb Euphemia, O Jesus, cries out in a loud voice: I love You, my Bridegroom; I seek You with painful longing; I am crucified with You; in your baptism, I am buried with You; I suffer for You that I may reign with You; and I die for You that I may live with You. Receive me as a spotless sacrifice immolated with love for You. By her prayers, O merciful One, save our souls.
You waged a good battle in your embrace of death, and after death you sanctified us with miraculous signs. We sing of your holy dormition, O all-praiseworthy Euphemia, coming to your divine church with faith, seeking to be saved from spiritual ills and to obtain the grace of your miracles.
1 Corinthians 1: 26-29
Brothers and sisters, you are among those called. Consider your situation. Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom; not many are influential; and surely not many are well-born. God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise; he singled out the weak of this world to shame the strong. He chose the world’s lowborn and despised, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who were something; so that mankind can do no boasting before God.
John 8: 21-30
The Lord said to the people coming to him: “I am going away. You will look for me but you will die in your sins. Where I am going you cannot come.” At this some of the Jews began to ask, “Does he mean he will kill himself when he claims, ‘Where I am going you cannot come’?”
Jesus went on: “You belong to what is below; I belong to what is above. You belong to this world–a world which cannot hold me. That is why I said you would die in your sins unless you come to believe that I AM.”
“Who are you, then?” they asked him. Jesus answered: “What I have been telling you from the beginning. I could say much about you in condemnation, but no, I only tell the world what I have heard from him, the truthful One who sent me.” They did not grasp that he was speaking of the Father. Jesus continued: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man you will come to realize that I AM and that I do nothing by myself. I say only what the Father has taught me, He has not deserted me since I always do what pleases him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.
Icon courtesy of Jack Figel, Eastern Christian Publications – ecpubs.com
Friday, September 15 –
