On Care for the Soul

On Care for the Soul was first published in 1894, at the end of Saint Nektarios’s tenure as a preacher in Athens (1891-1894), before he began his fifteen-year career as the director of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School in Athens. In this collection of eleven homilies, Saint Nektarios takes us through the central issues of life and the purpose of a human being and of his eternal soul. Saint Nektarios first lays out the foundation of man’s moral freedom in order to talk about why he is culpable for his sin. As the consequences for man’s sin are the offending of divine justice and the death of his soul, repentance and confession are required of him to rectify those consequences. Finally, having accomplished these things, the ultimate healing of man’s soul is found in his participation in the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist. Each carefully crafted homily pivots upon a passage from the Bible from which Saint Nektarios launches into an engaging explanation of each theme, drawing deeply and broadly from the Holy Scriptures, the Church Fathers, liturgical texts, church canons, and Classical writers. These timeless homilies speak with as much pertinence and relevance to the eternal soul of every human being today as they did at the turn of the 19th century.