Homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic (St. Cleopa of Sihastria)

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic 

On the Abolition of the Sabbath by Christ

By St. Cleopa of Sihastria

“Let no one therefore judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a feast, or new moon, or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:16–17)

Christ is risen!

Beloved faithful,

In today’s Gospel we see that Jesus Christ healed, on a Sabbath day, a paralytic who had been lying for 38 years. For this the Jews were angered, because the Lord had broken the commandment of the Sabbath. If, however, you listen attentively to what we shall speak today, you will clearly understand that the observance of the Sabbath is not given to Christians, but to the Jews; and at the same time you will understand that both the Savior and the Holy Apostles abolished, by word and deed, the observance of the Sabbath.

First, I will show that from Adam until Moses, for a period of 4,108 years, none of the ancient patriarchs kept the Sabbath as a feast. In order to understand this great truth, we will appeal to the testimonies of Holy Scripture, through which we will show that when God created man, He did not give him from the beginning a commandment to observe any day, but only placed him in the Garden of Eden — that is, in Paradise — to cultivate it and to guard it (Genesis 2:15). Then He gave him the first commandment: not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). Moreover, after Adam broke the commandment of God and was driven out of Paradise, he received no commandment from God to observe any day. On the contrary, his whole life now became a continuous labor under the form of a curse, and he received this command and sentence from God, who said to him: “In the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

2026 Pastoral Encyclical for the New Year (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 

 

Pastoral Encyclical

Sacred Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

New Year's Day 2026

Beloved children in the Lord,

I am communicating with you on this great day of the feast of the Circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ and the beginning of the new civil year along with the feast of Saint Basil the Great, and I extend to you my warm wishes for a blessed new year, with health, both physical and spiritual, and every good gift from God, pleasing and perfect. On this day the Church has appointed that, during the Divine Liturgy, a reading be proclaimed from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, which refers to the difference between the philosophy of this world and theology — a difference of great and central importance in our lives (Col. 2:8–12).

Philosophy is characterized as “empty deceit,” as “the tradition of men,” and as “the elements of the world,” and “not according to Christ.” Humanity has always looked upon the existing world and, on the one hand, sought to interpret it — what it is, that is, what its ontology is, why it exists, and ultimately how it came to be or who created it. Thus, from ancient Greece various philosophical schools developed, before and after Socrates, and also after Plato and Aristotle, down to our own days. The center of philosophy is human reason, with its deductions and imagination, by which the gaps of reasoning are filled.

Why Does Saint Paul Call Christ the "Firstborn From the Dead"? (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

"He Became the Firstborn of the Dead."

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The Resurrection of Christ, the supreme event in the mystery of the divine economy, gives us every year the opportunity to delve deeper into this event and little by little to share in the mystery of the Resurrection with our own resurrection. This, after all, is the purpose of establishing the annual Paschal celebration cycle.

In the joy of the Resurrection of Christ, we should remember that Christ in Holy Scripture and in the liturgical texts is described as "firstborn". After all, in one of the resurrection troparia we sing: "He became the firstborn of the dead."

The word "firstborn" denotes the first of the children in a family. This name is attributed to Christ in many ways. The Apostle Paul writes that the Son and Word of God is "the firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15), "the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29) and "the firstborn from the dead" (Col. 1:18).