"And [Jesus] went about all Galilee" [Matt 4:23] [...] He [Jesus] went about all Galilee, as a diligent doctor walks around those who are direly ill and applies the medicines appropriate for each individual affliction – because those who are weak could not come to the doctor. And the Lord was walking around each individual region. However, we who are shepherds of each single region although we do not have the need to go around the regions, we ought nonetheless to go around and consider the individual types of affliction of people; that is, we ought to attend diligently those among the people who labor under the disease of avarice so that we can make some sermon about the evil of avarice to serve as a medicine for the healing of him who is troubled by the goads of avarice, in accordance with the opinion of Paul, who says, "If we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation." [1 Tim 6:8-9] Again we ought to provide for those among the people who labor mightly under the burning fevers of passion so that, to remedy their affliction, we can also offer some medicine in the church from the medicinal apothecary of the apostle, who says, "Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body." [1 Cor 6:18] And as diligent head of a household knows what each one needs in his house, so also a priest ought to acquaint himself with the habits and actions and lifestyle of each one in order to minister such medicine as will be necessary for each: to whom consolation is needed, consolation; to whom rebuke is needed, rebuke. He ought not be angry to whom the more bitter medicine of rebuke has been prescribed according to the nature of his affliction because not even a sick person grows angry against the doctor, if he has applied some more biting medicine. For he does not consider the bitterness of the medicine and grows angry, but rather he considers the benevolence of the doctor and endures it because he desires that it help him rather than harm him. However, just as patient who comes to the doctor now is partially already healed, so also a sinner who comes to a priest and seeks the medicine of doctrine or of repentance is already partially righteous. But a grave illness holds one whom the priest pursues with words; and such a person does not sense the medicine of spiritual words or get better but, like those whose stomach ails, he throws up again whatever he has eaten or drunk. So is also the soul that endures whatever it has heard but immediately casts it out from its senses, and so are those unbelieving Jews to whom it was said, "They loathed any kind of food," [Ps 107:18] that is, every food of doctrine that nourishes the soul.

 

(trans. Kellerman 2010: 80-81)