The Epistle Reading of the Annunciation (Part 2, cont.)

Summary

Nikolaos Sotiropoulos continues his exposition of the Annunciation reading from Hebrews 2:11-18, teaching that Christ truly became a son of Adam while remaining sinless God, and that by taking flesh from the Virgin He broke the devil's power over death through His own bodily death. Presenting the devil as a real personal being rather than a symbol, he urges the faithful toward repentance, confession, Communion, prayer, fasting, and the Church's exorcisms against demonic influence. He recalls that death entered first as spiritual death, separation from God, and then as bodily death, and holds that the Cross has bound Satan so that he harms believers only when they turn from God and the mysteries, spiritual death being already abolished for the faithful, who begin to taste Paradise. He closes by presenting Christ as the merciful High Priest, the Seed of Abraham, who offered Himself on Golgotha, in the Mystical Supper, and in every Divine Liturgy.