| In her enduring wisdom and love for mankind, the Church provides us with a period of preparation before we enter Great Lent. We have passed through the Sundays of Zacchaeus, the Publican and the Pharisee, the Last Judgment, and now finally with today – the Sunday which commemorates the expulsion of Adam from Paradise. In each of these preparatory Sundays, forgiveness is at the heart of the Gospel message. In his great zeal to meet the Lord, Zacchaeus confessed his sins and repented by giving back four-fold his ill-gotten gains. The publican asks for forgiveness through his heartfelt “have mercy upon me, a sinner.” The Sunday of the Last Judgment reminds us that Christ will judge us according to the extent that we were merciful and forgiving of others. Finally, Forgiveness Sunday recalls Adam’s sin and more importantly, his unwillingness to ask for forgiveness. Reflecting upon this ancestral sin, Abba Dorotheos writes: Again, after his fall, God gave him an occasion to repent and to receive mercy, but he kept his stiff neck held high. He came to him and said ‘”Adam, Where are you? " ”instead of saying “What glory you have left and what dishonor you have arrived at?” After that, He asked him “Why did you sin? Why did you transgress the commandment? " ” By asking these questions, He wanted to give him the opportunity to say, “Forgive me.” However, he did not ask for forgiveness. There was no humility, there was no repentance, but indeed the opposite. (Practical Teaching on the Christian Life) The ability to ask for forgiveness and to forgive others is at the heart of the spiritual life. There can be no spiritual growth without these two components. In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the Lord tells His disciples, “For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you” (Matthew 7:2). Great Lent is a period of grace given to us to demonstrate in concrete actions and words our forgiveness of others who have wronged us. Our father among the saints, the righteous John of Kronstadt, is quoted as saying: |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy Metropolitan Hilarion: God does not want to condemn, but to save us On the 7 th of March 2021, on the Cheesefare week on the Last Judgement, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate " s Department for External Church Relations celebrated the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom at the Moscow church of “Joy to All the Afflicted” icon of the Mother of God on Bolshaya Ordynka street. Clergymen of the church assisted the archpastor. During the Litany of Fervent Supplication, petitions were offered up for deliverance of the coronavirus infection. After the Litany, Metropolitan Hilarion lifted up a prayer recited at the time of the spread of baneful pestilence. Then the Archpastor addressed those present with a sermon, saying: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! What does the Last Judgment mean to us and why, a week before the beginning of Great Lent, does the Church remember the Last Judgment? There is such a thing as justice. In our earthly reality, this means that if a person has committed a crime, he must be punished accordingly. The more serious the crime, the more serious the punishment. The entire Criminal Code, the entire system of criminal law is built on this principle. Of course, in the earthly life, justice is not always done. Sometimes the crime remains unsolved, and the person who should be in prison remains free. Or, an innocent person is accused of a crime, and he is serving a prison term, while the real criminal is not locked up. When we talk about the Divine justice, then, first of all, we are talking about human sins. Sins are crimes against the righteousness of God, which alienate us from the Lord and deprive us of the Kingdom of Heaven. Each of us has committed sins countless times. Sins are very different - grave and less grave, some of them seem to us regular and ordinary. There are sins that we commit in front of others, and there are, on the contrary, those sins that people do not see, but God sees. |
| Fresco of Andrei Rublev, " Last Judgement " , photo: foma.ru The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (25:31-46) One of the most deceptive aspects of our culture and society is the belief that when we die, we will become nothing. We just cease to exist. However, we as Christians understand the words of Jesus Christ as the truth and the reality of life. We test everything that we hear and see and understand against the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord reshapes and reforms our reality by His teachings, by His words. And through this reshaping of our reality, He then reshapes our lives and reshapes each of us. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us when we die, we will not simply cease to exist. We will not simply vanish. Even among many of the Protestant and evangelical denominations we see the belief that when we die, all will be well if we have believed in Jesus Christ, if we were “saved.” That we will avoid judgment and that God will not even judge us. All of these opposing philosophies seek to undermine the truth of the gospels. The truth as spoken by the Lord Jesus is that God is a judge, that there is indeed a judgement and that each of us will be judged and separated. Some will be numbered among the righteous and other will be numbered among the unrighteous. What are the criteria for this judgment? How will God judge each of us? He will judge us based on our actions! Not only based on what we say or what we believe, but on our actions themselves. As we begin seriously contemplating the meaning of life without meat, life with voluntary sacrifices, we are reminded that the Christian life is not really ultimately about how we fast, how many prostrations we do, how many prayers we say, or the length of our prayers. The criteria for a whole and complete Christian life is how well do we love. How active is our life of love? The Lord Jesus Christ tells us that at the judgment, each and every one of us will stand and have to give an account for our actions. What actions? Specifically these: Did we feed the hungry? Did we give drink to the thirsty? Did we welcome strangers? Did we clothe those who lacked clothing? Did we visit those who were sick? Did we come to those who were in prison? |
| The Sunday of the Dread Judgment Our Faith : Fasting Last Updated: Feb 8th, 2011 - 05:50:02 The Sunday of the Dread Judgment Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov Feb 22, 2009, 10:00 Discuss this article Printer friendly page There is only one week left before the beginning of Great Lent. For people who are far from the Church, Lent comes unexpectedly, that is to say, they do not expect it and do not prepare for it. Although for such people Lent ends just as unexpectedly, Church feasts unexpectedly pass by, and life itself unexpectedly comes to its natural end. And it so happens that such a man spent his whole life trying to hide from God, running from Him, and not expecting to meet Him. It appears that a lot has been accomplished: he received an advanced degree, made a good career, bought a house and an expensive car, travelled around the world. But standing before God, the man finds himself absolutely naked: " Lord, I had a new Mercedes… Lord, I vacationed in Hawaii… Lord, I became the head of my department… " Unfortunately, " not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven " (Matt. 7:21). God wants only one thing: " My son, give me thine heart " (Prov. 23:26). But where are our hearts?—There, where our treasure is (Luke 12:34): on vacation, in the trunk of the Mercedes, and in the desk drawer at work. Chasing after the worldly, running in circles of worldly vanity, the man grows attached to this vanity, becomes one with it, and no longer can or wants to be with God. Of course, with their minds most people would say that they would rather be in paradise than hell, but their heart is fleeing from God. " Such ones say one thing, but their heart says another: with their tongue they say " Lord, Lord, " but their heart says " Have me excused " " (Saint Theophan the Recluse). Such people are not accustomed to prayer, fasting to them is burdensome, and they are strangers in church, even during divine services they are constantly drawn to where their heart is—and it is not in church, not with God. |
| Tweet Нравится May God Give You Wisdom! The Letters of Fr. John Krestiankin. Letters to Clergymen,To Those Desiring the Priestly Rank, and to Priests’ Wives. Part 1 Archimandrite John (Krestiankin) Fear not, little flock Dear Fr. K.! Proof of our rightness in God is a peaceful spirit, which the Holy Spirit generates in the righteous soul. You do not have this peace, which means that you have no rightness. You are governed by fleeting impressions, and do not delve into the depths of God’s judgments, Holy Scripture, and the whole history of the Church which witnesses to them. I will not try to soothe you with persuasion, nor examples, nor with my own experience, because you do not have the main source of peace in your soul: a firm and undoubting faith in God’s Providence, and in the fact that the head and rudder of the Church is Christ Himself. You have nothing but doubt about everything. Could it be that the Lord makes mistakes, or perhaps He does not govern the world at all? Could it be that those who blew the winds of “freedom” into the Church are the only ones who truly care for it? The daily Gospels and Epistles answer the questions you have written to me in your letter, and I begin to wonder: could it be that Fr. K. does not read the Scriptures? Could it be that all the powers of his soul, mind and heart are spent entirely on contemporary periodicals? Everything that is going on in the world is not a revelation. All must come to pass, and the Second Coming is approaching, while people will be saving their souls up until the world’s last days, according to the promise. Some will be saved, others will perish. Their main saving activity will be: preserving the faith. Our soul and heart should be anxious over our own faith, and the faith of those who are entrusted to our care. The lines, Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace (Lk. 7:50), and According to your faith be it unto you (Matt. 9:29), sound throughout all time. Without faith there can be no peace. Everyone saves himself in his own field. Human mistakes — yours, mine, the synod members’, the Patriarch’s — are all before God’s judgment. But God’s judgment and man’s judgment are not the same. |
| “We Shall Have to Answer for All Before the Absolute Good” What happens to man’s soul after death? By what criteria will Christians and non-Christians be judged? Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) explains in the following sermon. Pavel Ryzhenko. The Last Judgement. At the moment of death, the soul leaves the body and enters into a new realm of existence, although it does not lose either its memory or the ability to think and feel. Moreover, the soul goes to another world burdened by the weight of responsibility for the life it has lived, carrying within itself the memory thereof. The Christian doctrine of the Dread Judgment that awaits all men following their death is based on the fact that all the good and evil deeds performed by man leave traces in the soul, and everything must be answered for before the Absolute Good besides which no evil or sin can exist. The Kingdom of God is incompatible with sin: And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or makeith a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life , the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian says in the Book of Revelation Every evil for which man has not repented with all sincerity at Confession, every secret sin, every impurity of soul – all will be revealed at the Dread Judgment: For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad , says Christ [Mark 4:22]. They already knew of the Dread Judgment in the Old Testament. Ecclesiastes says: Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thy eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement But Christ Himself speaks of this with particular clarity: When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. |
| In my last two blog articles, I examined the biblical, patristic, and conciliar evidence for the traditional view of the Church that the punishments of Gehenna were eternal , and also examined the question of how belief in the eternity of those punishments could be consistent with the love of God. I advanced the view that Scripture, the Fathers, the pronouncements of councils, and the general consensus of the Church since those councils all agreed that the punishment of Gehenna was eternal. I also suggested that those in Gehenna were destroyed by their choices so that the faculty of free will as we experience it in this age ceased to exist in them. In this final blog article I will examine some of the Father’s teaching to see how they viewed the pain of hell being consistent with God’s love. Like the previous two posts, it must be somewhat cursory and limited, since this is a blog, not a book. We approach the issue through the question, “How does God relate to those condemned to hell?” Let us begin by reviewing the Scriptures , and especially the teaching of Christ with which the Fathers interacted. The Lord paints a consistent picture of divine rejection of the unrighteous. Those who are unrepentant evildoers at the last judgment will hear Christ say, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you evildoers” (Matthew 7:23). Those unprepared by repentance, portrayed in one of His parables as foolish virgins, will on that day pound at the door, saying, “Lord, Lord, open to us!”, only to hear Him reply, “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you.” (Matthew 25:11-2). The lost will be cast out into outer darkness (Matthew 8:12, 22:13, 25:30), cast into Gehenna (Mark 9:45). At the last judgement they will hear Christ say, “Depart from Me” (Matthew 25:41). Taken together, these are unmistakable and vivid pictures of rejection, and perhaps at the basis of St. Paul’s assertion that the disobedient will “pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). This last phrase, rendered here “away from the presence of the Lord”, is the Greek apo prosopou tou kuriou . The preposition apo must here be rendered “away from” and not simply “from” (as coming from a source)—thus the Arndt-Gingrich Lexicon, which takes the preposition in this verse “to indicate distance from a point: away from ”. The New Testament picture of Gehenna is consistently one of divine rejection. |
| Sermon on the Sunday of the Last Judgment When the Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of glory: And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: Naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in: naked, and ye clothed Me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee? Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal (Matthew 25:31-46). We know that Christians should avoid vainglory, conceit, and the tacit expectation of rewards of grace during Lent. However, even the most careful and unceasing self-control does not always lead to the desired results. Protecting oneself from hidden vainglory during Lent is by no means easy. This is where Christian good deeds – when one really takes on human grief – can be of help. After all, when we move away from ourselves by coming into contact with concrete human trouble and misfortune, by sharing in someone’s oppressive grief, our own concerns fade into the background, silent and diminished. One person grieves because of frequent colds, while another dreams of learning to walk without crutches. When we see real grief right in front of us we begin to experience a burning shame not only for our own petty vainglory, but also for our prosperity: just recently we thought it defective and dared complain about our lot. |
| Tweet Нравится Why are the Dead Commemorated on Saturdays? The Saturdays of commemorations of the dead are called ancestral Saturdays (the first universal commemoration on Meat Fare Saturday, the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent, Trinity Saturday, and St. Demetrius Saturday). Why do these take place specifically on Saturdays? What are the historical roots of this tradition? They were not all instituted at the same time. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he ceased from all His works which God began to do (Gen. 2:3). Saturday (Sabbath) for the Jews was a day of festive rest. Christ’s resurrection placed the beginning of the new Israel: a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Pet. 2:9). The resurrection day of the Savior of the World became the seventh, festive day that completes the week. Sunday [in Russian, voskresenie, meaning “resurrection”) is a day of prayer in church at Divine Liturgy and pious rest. From a day of earthly rest, Saturday became a symbol of joyous rest in the Kingdom of Heaven: There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his (Heb. 4:9–10). This is where the custom, fixed by the Church typicon, came from of having special services on Saturday for the commemoration of the dead. The establishment of the universal ancestral Meat Fare Saturday dates back to the first century of Christianity. In the Synaxarion for this day (The Lenten Triodion) it says that the holy fathers established, having received it from the holy Apostles, that on this day should be commemorated all people from the ages who have reposed in faith and piety. This day was chosen because Meat Fare week reminds us of the future Last Judgment. On the eve of this day, Saturday, as if preceding the Last Judgment, the Church prays especially for all of its reposed children, begging the Lord to have mercy on them and make them partakers of blessed eternal life. |
| “People will be judged for inhumanity,” Patriarch Daniel stressed during his homily on the Meatfare Sunday of the Last Judgement. Photography courtesy of Basilica.ro/Files Patriarch Daniel quoted a homily by St. John Chrysostom, where the great hierarch imagines a continuation of the dialogue in the Gospel passage about the Last Judgment: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Matthew 25:31-46) But Lord, why do you not bring other roads to mind? “I do not judge the sin,” He says, “but the inhumanity. I do not judge the ones who have sinned, but the ones who did not repent. I judge you severely for your inhumanity, because you disregard such beneficence, although you had almsgiving as such a great medicine of salvation, by which all sins are blotted out. I reproach, therefore, inhumanity as the root of wickedness and of every impiety. I praise love toward mankind as the root of all goods, and I threaten the inhumane with the eternal fire; to the beneficent I promise the Kingdom of the Heavens. (St John Chrysostom, Homily 7 on Repentance and Compunction, 26) “Here we see that the ultimate criterion of people’s judgment is their way of being human, of being generous, of being merciful, of having sensitivity, of feeling the desire to give help to the helpless and to do good to those who need it,” the Patriarch of Romania explained. “Today’s gospel reading teaches us that it is not enough not to harm anyone, but we must do much good to all the people we can help,” His Beatitude said Sunday at the Chapel of the Patriarchal Residence. God does not accept carelessness and indifference, the Patriarch stressed, because there is a lot of selfishness in them. Whereas in almsgiving, in doing good, a great deal of merciful love is seen; the merciful love of Christ is seen working through compassionate people. A Mobilizing Gospel |
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