Sunday message (audio message) of His Eminence the Metropolitan
Seraphim Seraphim of Kythera & Antikythera
Sunday, Luke VI, 20 October 2024
—
SERMON OF KIRIAKIS VI LUKA (20-10-2024) by Rev.Paul Kallila
Last Sunday, through the Gospel passage, our Lord and God acts as a Farmer and Sower in the field of our hearts. In today's Gospel passage, Christ acts as the unique Deliverer of our bodies and souls, that is, of our entire existence.
Christ came out of the ship that carried him and stepped ashore, writes Luke the Evangelist. There he met a demon possessed with many demons, a whole legion (some say that the legion's battalion consisted of about six thousand). A numerous system of demons, which stood and moved disgustingly with that poor man, in the tombs and in the mountains. Together they were tortured.
Having sailed on this occasion and out of charity the Lord sailed to that beach, he ordered the legion of demons to leave the man. But he did not tell them where to go. For this reason, that pammy swarm of evil spirits was in perplexity. He feared that he might now be delivered by the Lord to the future damnation, «by which damnation they will be delivered to perfect immobility, since all their actions will be abolished», as St. Gregory Palamas notes.
So the demons ask for permission and beg the Lord to allow them to go into the herd of swine that were there. The Lord allows them. This, that we may know from what the swine have done, that they would not even spare the man there to destroy him utterly, if they were not restrained, both before and now evidently, by the power of our Lord. Great is the devil's fury against men. But incomparably greater is the providence of God.
The Philanthropic and Liberating Only-Begotten Son of God is therefore coming down to earth to free our souls from this tyranny and the raging fury of the devil. For this reason, above all, He removes the demons and from those who are openly possessed in the flesh. That is, to present and confirm by this manifest deliverance and healing of man the freedom and healing of the soul, which again He works in secret, because ’the Son of Man has power on earth over the sins of the ungodly« (Matt. i. 6).
Great, therefore, is the need and the effort to escape the traps and the domination of the devil. Necessary for this is the regular and sincere recourse to the stone of our spirituality. Our participation in the Sacrament of Confession. Only then will we receive «by the grace and charity of our Lord Jesus Christ» the freedom and healing of our souls and bodies.
