Homilies on the Books of Holy Scripture: The Prophetic Books of the Old Testament (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

Homilies on the Books of Holy Scripture 

The Prophetic Books of the Old Testament 

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

(Sunday, July 27, 2025)

After the historical books that we saw in previous sermons, there are the prophetic books in the Old Testament, which were written by blessed people called Prophets. In addition to the Kings who politically governed the Israelite people and the High Priests who performed religious ceremonies, there were also the Prophets, who performed miraculous works.

In the Hebrew language, Prophets firstly means those who speak in the name of God. Secondly, it characterizes those who spoke with divine inspiration and enthusiasm for the return to God of people who had strayed from Him. Thirdly, it denotes those who see God, but also all the future things that were to happen to Israelites and Gentiles, mainly they saw and predicted the coming of Christ at the appropriate time.

In these three senses the Prophets were the “foreseeers”, the “seeers” of God, they had communion with Him and prayed saying: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” And afterwards, when they received a word from God, they spoke to the people with the phrase: “Thus says the Lord.”

July: Day 23: Teaching 1: Holy Prophet Ezekiel

 

July: Day 23:* Teaching 1:
Holy Prophet Ezekiel
 
(About the Resurrection of the Dead)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Prophet Ezekiel. He lived during the reign of the Judean King Josiah and was taken captive to Babylon in the twenty-sixth year of his life. In the fifth year of the captivity, Ezekiel received a divine command in a wondrous vision from God to preach to the Jews and persuade them to repentance. Ezekiel beheld the opened heavens and amidst them a great bright cloud. In the latter vision, the Prophet saw four living creatures; each had four faces - that of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle; the creatures had wings and wheels adorned with eyes, with each having four wings, two hands, and one wheel. Above the heads of the creatures was a crystalline vault, upon which a shining throne was elevated. On the throne sat One who had the appearance of a man. Filled with fear and awe, the Prophet fell to his face and heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him: "Arise, son of man, I will speak with you."

Homily Two on the Prophet Ezekiel (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

Today we celebrate the Prophet Ezekiel who lived in Old Testament times and indeed in the 7th to 6th century BC, and who was the son of a Jewish priest and lived in the time of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

The Prophet Ezekiel was married and a priest in the Temple of Solomon, when the Babylonians conquered the Jews, and he himself was taken captive to Babylon. In this city of captivity he was called by God to the prophetic office and he lived among his other captive compatriots.

The name Ezekiel in the Hebrew language means "God's Strength or God will strengthen", and this shows that throughout his life, with the work he accomplished, he proved that God is powerful and strengthens His Prophets. Therefore, the Prophet Ezekiel is one of the great Prophets, he lived and acted prophetically and died in Babylon, in the place of captivity. He practiced his prophetic work for about twenty years. As I said before, he was married, but his wife died on the day the Babylonians captured Jerusalem.

Paschal Pastoral Encyclical 2009 (Metr. Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

 The Prophecy of the Resurrection

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The resurrectional atmosphere of these days brings joy to all of us, because we celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, Who is the Head of the Church, but also because we gain the certainty of our own resurrection. It is a feast that refers to Christ, but also to ourselves.

Christ rose and gave us the hope of our resurrection, first from our passions, which are an experience of death, and then from the death of our body. Man was not created by God to live with the passions of carnality, pretention and avarice, but neither to die. In Paradise, before the fall, man lived differently than he lives today, he had real communion with God, and with all creation, and he had the possibility of remaining immortal. But after the fall, pleasure and pain developed in man, and death came into his being. Thus, now with the Resurrection of Christ a new life begins, man experiences his own resurrection from the passions, he is freed from the tyranny of pleasure and pain, but he also acquires the certainty of the future resurrection of his body.