Tag Archives: Matthew 25:31-46

Hidden in Christ

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Sunday, February 23 (OS February 10), 2020: Meat-fare Sunday, Commemoration of the Awesome Judgement; Hieromartyr Charalampos, Bishop of Magnesia and Martyrs Porphyrius and Baptus, (202); St. Anna, wife of Yaroslav I (1050); Ven. Prochorus of the Near Kyivan Caves (1107); Martyrs Ennatha, Valentina and Paula of Palestine (308); St. Scholastica, sister of St. Benedict (543).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

Glory to Jesus Christ!

This past week the daily Epistle and Gospel readings have focused on two themes.

The epistles have emphasized the primacy of charity–of love–in the Christian life. As for the Gospel readings, these have recounted the events of Holy Week. Taken together, the epistles remind us of Jesus Christ’s great love for each of us. They remind us as well that it is the same sacrificial love to which we are called.

Let me make this stronger.

Love that is not sacrificial is not really love. However if we stop here we risk misunderstanding the life to which we are called. To know what it means to love sacrificially we need to turn to today’s readings.

St Paul reminds those troublesome Corinthians, that while fasting and the ascetical life are important, they are not the point of the Christian. The goal, as we’ve heard all week in the readings, is to love others. And, by love, Paul means to do that which is best for our neighbor.

Often in my own spiritual life I get undone because I assume–wrongly as Jesus tells me in the parable–that to love others means I must do great things. After all, if my love for you must be sacrificial, don’t I need to do something big? This isn’t what Jesus asks of us today.

Rather our Lord asks us to do small acts of kindness that St John Chrysostom says are within the reach of all of us. Indeed, one needn’t even be Christian to know that you ought to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirst, clothe the naked or visit those who are sick or imprisoned. All of these are the actions of any morally decent human being.

So where is sacrifice? It is this: rather than doing great things to win the praise of others, or even to bolster our own sense of self-worth, we are called to live a life “hidden in Christ” as St Paul tells the Colossians (3:3). The humility of our love should be such that it is easily overlooked not only by the world but, as the response of both the sheep and goats suggest, by us as well.

Put slightly differently, we are called to engage in quiet acts of simple charity for no other reason than because it is the right thing to do. This means that need to be indifferent, detached, from not only your opinion of my actions but of my own as well.

And doing the morally good thing because it is good changes me. Too frequently get things backwards. I don’t do good things because I am a good person. I become a good person by doing good. It is the habit of small acts of charity that purifies my heart. If I wait for my heart to be pure, my intentions to be right, then I’ll never act.

The sheep in the parable simply loved others without any thought of reward. The goats, however, did good but did so to earn a reward; their good deeds, their charity, was transaction. They did something to get something.

Sheep love others, goats love only themselves.

While the good we do is easily overlooked, we shouldn’t underestimate its effects in the aggregate. It was through small, easily overlooked acts of charity, that the early Church overcame the Roman Empire. The Church conquered the Empire not by force of arms by making it the Church.

Everything the Church has accomplished, it has accomplished by the habit of daily acts of personal charity. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, all of these persecuted Christ and the Gospel. And all of these fell not through military might but by Christians who lived faithful lives hidden in Christ. It is the Cross, not the sword, which overcomes the world.

The Church has triumphed in this life when Christians have embraced a life hidden in Christ. We will triumph as a parish, to say nothing of finding our own, personal salvation, by likewise living a life hidden in Christ.

My brothers and sisters in Christ! To do this we need only take our eyes off ourselves and fix them on Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus and allow Him to direct you in the ways you should go.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Joy of Judgment

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Sunday, March 2 (OS., February 18) 2019: Sunday of the Last Judgment (Meatfare Sunday); St. Leo the Great, pope of Rome (461). St. Agapitus, bishop of Synnada in Phrygia (4th c.). St. Flavian the Confessor, patriarch of Constantinople (449). St. Cosmas, monk, of Yakhromsk (1492).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

Ss Cyril & Methodius Orthodox Church. Madison, WI

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Every year when we come to this Sunday, my attention is drawn to the kontakion for the feast. Every year we are reminded by the Church that there will come a day for all of us when “the books will be opened and all secrets disclosed.”

This day when the book of my life is opened and all my secrets are revealed is the Last Judgment. And, as both the Scriptures and the icon of the feast make clear, all of this will be public.

It isn’t just, in other words, that the book of my life and my secrets will be known by Jesus; He already knows me better than I know myself. No, on that Great and Last Day, the whole of my life–the virtuous and the vicious–will be laid out for the angels and all humanity to see.

From one perspective, the dread and anxiety that I, or really any of us, feel at the thought of standing naked before all creation is understandable. As we’ve talked about before, all of us have done things about which we are naturally and justly ashamed. This what St Paul means when he says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NJKV).

But if we are honest with ourselves, there is no real comfort in the universality of sin and shame. As will hear next week, after their transgression our First Parents “knew that they were naked” and in reaction “sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings” to hid not from God but from each other (Genesis 3:7).

However understandable is the dread I experience at the prospect of the Last Judgment, my fear is itself the consequence of sin. Like Adam and Eve in the moments after the Fall, it is because I am still unrepentant that I fear being known not only by God but by you as well.

In a fallen world, we spend immense amounts of time, energy and wealth hiding not only from God and each other but from ourselves. We craft believable, but ultimately false, images of ourselves. We work so hard to remain unknown and unseen even by those to whom we are closest.

The tragedy of all this is that the only real consequence of hiding is that we are lonely.

Seen from this perspective, far from being something to fear the Last Judgment is something to be desired. Rather than flee from the Judgment which is to come, we should prepare for it with joyful anticipation. To know the judgment of God and is to know the fullness of His love!

The Last Judgment is the moment in which finally all the lies we tell ourselves and all the shame that cripple us melt away in the fire of God’s love. It is the moment in which, finally, we are known and loved for who we are and not who we pretend to be.

The Last Judgment is the moment in which we are finally able to love others for who they are rather than who we want them to be.

The Last Judgment is the moment in which the power and glory of God’s supra-abundant love are made clear for all to see.

The Last Judgment is the moment in which we together with all creation are illumined by that love.

The Last Judgment is the moment in which we will come to know not only God but ourselves and each other.

If all this is true, why am I still afraid?

Because my love is still immature, still imperfect. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).

This is why, turning to the Gospel, Jesus reminds us that we will be judged based on how we care–or don’t–for others. It isn’t enough to have faith since ”Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19).

St James is unstinting in his condemnation of what the philosopher Etienne Gilson calls “piety without technique.” The Apostle’s clarity is brutal the kind of faith that says to the poor, hungry and naked, “‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’” but doesn’t “give them the things which are needed for the body is the faith of demons. And so he says faith that “does not have works, is dead”  (James 2:16, 17).

We must be cautious here.

St Paul tells us our faith is not about what we eat or drink but about what we freely do out of love for Christ and our neighbor. A few chapters after today’s epistle, he reminds the Corinthians that while miracles have their place, what matters most is the wisdom that reveals the secrets of the human heart and moves the unbelievers to fall down on their faces to “worship God.” Our works must not only be practical but be inspired by the divine wisdom that transforms unbelievers into disciples and apostles of Jesus Christ who go on to “report that God is truly among you” (see 1 Corinthians 14:25).

All that we do–the sacraments, the services of the Church, our personal prayer, our asceticism and yes, our good deeds–have only one goal. We do all these things to strip away the lies and the shame that would kill love.

As these things fall away, we grow in wisdom and become a bit more who we will be revealed to be at the Last Judgment.

And on that Day?

On that Day, we will be clothed in Divine Glory as were Adam and Eve before the Fall.

On that Day, our beauty will be there for all creation to see.

On that day, we will thank God not only for the gift of our own lives but the lives of all humanity.

My brothers and sisters in Christ! As we prepare to begin the Great Fast, let us not lose sight of the fact that we are getting ready not simply to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ but moving toward the Last Judgment, for that Great Day when “God will wipe away every tear” and when “there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things” the lies and the shame of sin, will “have passed away.”

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Homily: Growing in Love

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Sunday, February 11, 2018 (O.S., January 29): Meatfare Sunday; Sunday of the Last Judgment; God-bearer(107). Martyrs Romanus, James, Philotheus, Hyperechius, Abibus, Julian and Paregorius (297) Martyrs Silvanus, bishop of Emesa, Luke the Deacon, and Mocius (Mucius) the Reader (312). St. Laurence, recluse of the Kyiv Caves and bishop of Turov (1194).

Ss Cyril & Methodius Ukrainian Orthodox Mission, Madison, WI

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Gospel: Matthew 25:31-46

Reflecting on his love of tragedies and of the grief he feels when a character in a play suffers, St Augustine says he did this not because he loved sorrow but because he wanted to think of himself as the kind of man who feels pity at the sufferings of others. He wanted to think of himself in other words as merciful.

After all, he asks himself, “what kind of mercy is it that arises from” fiction? The audience isn’t asked “to relieve” the suffering they see on the stage “but merely … to grieve.” And the more we sorrow, the more we applaud. In fact he says the “insanity” is so perverse that if we don’t go away feeling bad, we feel cheated. But if we grieve at the fictitious suffering we shed “tears of joy” (Confessions, III:2).

Writing some 15 centuries later, the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer would refer to the insanity Augustine saw in himself as “cheap grace” describing it as “the grace we bestow on ourselves.” “Cheap grace,” he says, “is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (The Cost of Discipleship, 44,45).

Whether we call it “insanity” or “cheap grace,” St Paul in his epistle condemns both. Because of sin, there is in me a tendency to selfishness, to deal sharply with God as I seek to minimize what He asks of me. Like Augustine, I want to feel mercy but not act mercifully. Or, to return to Bonhoeffer, I want to be forgiven but not asked to repent.

As we look forward to the beginning of the Great Fast, the Church asks us to reflect once again on St Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “food does not commend us to God; for neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we do not eat are we the worse.” This isn’t a rejection of fasting but a sober reminder of its limits. Indeed of the limits of all of our efforts.

Many of us, whether we Christian or not, fall into the same trap as Augustine. We imagine that it is enough if we feel bad for others. We think it is enough to have the right feelings or to hold to the right opinions. If our heart is in the right place, it doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do.

I desperately want to be judged not by what I do but by what I feel. In the grip of this madness, I think my words and actions don’t matter as long as they “come from a good place.” I want, in other words, “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

This was the spiritual illness that afflicted the Corinthians. They thought their liberty meant they could do as they please without any thought to the consequences of their actions for other people.

As important as fasting is for the fathers of the Church, it is only a means to an end. I fast in order to overcome my selfishness so that, in turn, I am able to love.

And just as “cheap grace” isn’t really grace but a counterfeit, love without sacrifice isn’t really love. True love isn’t just sacrificial, it longs to sacrifice. If I love you, I want what is best for you. And if what is best for you is costly for me? I am glad to pay that cost and more.

St Maria of Paris reminds us that “The way to God lies through love of people.” Reflecting on the Gospel we just heard Mother Maria goes on to say that

At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead, I shall be asked did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked.

The reason that I will be asked this, and nothing else, is because

About every poor, hungry and imprisoned person the Savior says ‘I’: ‘I was hungry and thirsty, I was sick and in prison.’ To think that he puts an equal sign between himself and anyone in need. . . . I always knew it, but now it has somehow penetrated to my sinews. It fills me with awe (The Pearl of Great Price, 29-30).

Not all of us are called, as Mother Maria was, to open a hostel for the poor. But, as the Gospel makes clear, whatever our state in life, all of us are called to care for those in need as best we can. St John Chrysostom says even the poor are called to care for rich by speaking a kind word or offering a prayer.

My brothers and sisters in Christ! Everything we do in the Church is done for one reason, and one reason only. To heal the human heart of the selfishness that is the defining quality of sin.

As selfishness recedes so too will fear.

As fear recedes, your desire to love will grow.

As the desire to love grows, your willingness to love sacrificially will also grow.

And as your willingness to love grows, you will begin to discover more and more opportunities to love!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory