“I am accustomed to any and every situation”
I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation, to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. (Philippians 4:12 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A self-help phrase: the secret of contentment.
The cultural key
The verb (memyemai) is the technical term of the mystery religions: to be initiated, the word Eleusis and the other cults used for admission to their guarded rites. Paul's readers heard 'I have been initiated into the mystery of...', and then the punchline lands on the most unmystical content imaginable: going hungry and having enough, tight months and good ones. The Stoics chased the same equilibrium through self-sufficiency (autarkeia, the very word in verse 11); Paul's version runs on someone else's strength (verse 13).
Recovered meaning
Contentment presented as the true initiation: not secret torchlit rites but a learned steadiness through full and empty seasons. The famous 'I can do all things through him who strengthens me' is this initiation's diploma, about surviving abundance and hunger, not about athletic feats.