Martyrs Platon and Roman; Holy Martyr Romanus and the holy child who declared for Christ (305); Holy New Martyr Anastasius of Epirus (1750), and Daniel, whom he converted

You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, ¹⁴wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us. He has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵Having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

¹⁶Let no one therefore judge you in eating or drinking, or with respect to a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath day, ¹⁷which are a shadow of the things to come; but the body is Christ’s. ¹⁸Let no one rob you of your prize by self-abasement and worshiping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, ¹⁹and not holding firmly to the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and ligaments, grows with God’s growth.

²⁰If you died with Christ from the elemental spirits of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to ordinances,

Being asked by the Pharisees when God’s Kingdom would come, he answered them, “God’s Kingdom doesn’t come with observation; ²¹neither will they say, ‘Look, here!’ or, ‘Look, there!’ for behold, God’s Kingdom is within you.”

²²He said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. ²³They will tell you, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘Look, there!’ Don’t go away or follow after them, ²⁴for as the lightning, when it flashes out of one part under the sky, shines to another part under the sky, so will the Son of Man be in his day. ²⁵But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.