Today Sunday 20 July 2025, On Sunday, St. Matthew, His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Kythera & Antikythera addresses, as every week, the established audio message to the faithful of the local Church, through the Holy Metropolis of Kythera.
The healing of the soul is the primary focus - Written Sermon on Sunday St. Matthew by Archim. Archbishop Pavlos Dimitrakopoulos
Today's Sunday, dear brothers and sisters, is this Sunday of the Evangelist Matthew, in which the Gospel reading we heard earlier is a passage from the 9th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. In this passage, the Evangelist Matthew describes the miracle we all know of the healing of the paralytic of Capernaum, who was brought down from the roof before the Lord by four men who carried him, because it was impossible for them to approach the Lord in the house where he was teaching because of the crowd. According to the Evangelist's account, while Christ was teaching in a house in Capernaum, they brought before him a paralytic who was lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw the faith of the paralytic and of those who carried him, he said to the paralytic: Take heart, my child, your sins are forgiven.
What we need to emphasize here is the fact that the Lord does not just go straight to the physical healing of the paralytic on the basis of his Faith, as one would expect, but He first gives him the remission of his sins. He gives priority to the healing of his soul and then to the healing of his body. This is because the soul is immortal compared to the body, which is perishable, subject to decay and death. And therefore the more superior the soul is to the body, the more important and necessary is the healing of the soul in relation to the healing of the body. The Lord, in healing the soul of the paralytic, points out the great truth that the greatest evil in man is not the sickness of the body, but the sickness of the soul.
Indeed, as the Holy Fathers teach us, the greatest disease, the one that mainly sickens man, paralyzes him spiritually and leads him to death, both spiritual and biological, is sin. This is because sin is what separates us from God, who is the source of life. Sin in its essence is a perversion, a derangement of human nature, a rebellion against God. God created man immortal, to live in heaven in a constant state of joy, happiness and bliss. But since he sinned and transgressed God's commandment, since he rebelled against God, he was deprived of the life-giving energy of Divine Grace and ceased to be in communion with God. This deprivation eventually resulted in decay, bodily diseases and biological and spiritual death, and in general all the evils that plague humanity.
The above great truths, it seems that we have not realized them as much as we should, my brothers. For while we should strive with all our strength to heal our souls from the diseases of our sins and passions, we are indifferent. We give priority to the health of our bodies and not to the health of our souls. When we fall ill, we do everything to get well, we seek the best doctors, we even spend our entire fortune, while we show little care for our immortal soul.
But here the question arises: How can we be healed of the disease of sin and how can we be freed from our passions? First of all, what we must emphasize from the very beginning is that the Church is nothing but a spiritual hospital, a psychotherapeutic hospital. And secondly, that everything our Church does is aimed at healing our soul. In other words, all the holy services, the holy sacraments, the meetings for the study of the Holy Scriptures, the care for the poor, everything is aimed at this. Above all, however, the Sacrament of Holy Confession is the Sacrament in which we receive the remission of our sins, provided, of course, that we sincerely repent and obey the suggestions of our spiritual director. The most tragic thing, in this regard, is the fact that unfortunately many of us do not even have a spiritual director. And assuming we do, we do not confess regularly, nor do we obey, what our spiritual director advises us. Many of us go to confession, but we don't know how to confess. Either we hide our sins and passions, or we try to blame our faults on others and thus we neither get forgiveness of sins nor find healing.
Let us, my brothers, take into account all that we have said before and let us strive to put it into practice. Let us not be indifferent, for we do not know when the hour of our death will come, when our repentance will no longer be acceptable. Let us take care of the healing of our immortal soul by participating in the Holy Sacraments of our Church according to what we have mentioned above. Which I hope will be done to all through the grace and charity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the intercessions of the Virgin Mary and all the saints, amen.
Archim. Paul Dimitrakopoulosς
