In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

At the time of the Great Entrance, N will come out with the aer over his head. You have never seen him like that before, and you won’t see him like that again. Why is he doing this? It’s because at this time he will be ordained to the Holy Priesthood, God willing, and he will be offered by us. That is why his head is covered with the aer. He is part of our offering, along with the bread, and wine, for the Eucharist. It will be his responsibility afterwards to feed the flock by celebrating the Divine Liturgy. The priest is part of our offering, therefore, at this particular time. That is why it is important for you to pray for him when the deacon comes out, and makes a prostration in your direction, saying “Command”. He is prostrated in your direction, asking for your blessing, concurrence, and agreement that he be part of this offering.

On this day, Meat-fare Sunday, the day of the Last Judgement, we are presented with a theme which seems to run all over the place these days (and not just these days). I grew up in Alberta, and when I was about fourteen or fifteen, I first heard Gospel radio programmes talking about the end of the world which was going to happen in five minutes. These things were generally scary. I had a very interesting conversation last night with the youth group, who brought up the same subject, because this theme is still running around: the end of the world is coming in five minutes, and it’s a scary thing. The young people were right to express their concern about the gravity of all of this.

The whole point of the Second Coming is not to be making us run scared, because when we are running scared, we’re not paying attention to anything around. If we pay attention closely to both of today’s readings, we understand that they are about the nature of our relationship with each other, and with God. The Apostle Paul was saying that if a person is going to eat meat offered to idols, then one has the liberty to do so because we’re blessing it anyway, and giving thanks to God. God’s blessing overcomes anything offered to idols.

However, for the sake of a brother or sister who might be tempted by our exercise of liberty, we restrain ourselves for their sake. The weaker person is not to be led into temptation by the exercise of my liberty. It is true that we have great freedom in Christ, but this freedom is not wild-fire freedom that is to be exercised on a whim. It is freedom that is to be exercised having regard to everyone around us, and first of all, having regard to whether it is being exercised according to God’s will. We have the freedom to live in harmony with God’s will, and the freedom to live against God’s will. We’ve always had that liberty in God’s love. That’s how the Fall came in the first place, because our first parents listened to the Tempter, and accepted the hypothesis.

When it comes to the Last Judgement itself, people like to focus in on little details about this – who exactly is going to go left, and who exactly is going to go right, and what do I have to do to make sure I go right. We are so obsessed with these details, and mistaken in our belief that God is interested in our fulfilling these details so we can somehow "qualify" to get in. God is not interested in our fulfilling of all these little details. God is interested in the condition of my heart, and the effect of my life on the people around me, and on my environment. That is what He is interested in. Celebrating the Divine Liturgy well, beautifully, and correctly, for instance, is very important, but we are not going to be judged by that alone by any means. Observing the fast is very important, but it is not observing the fast in order to "qualify" to get into the Kingdom of Heaven, and to get brownie points from God that is important. It is my offering to God of my abstaining from flesh-meats, and other delightful things, in order to spend more time with Him.

What do we do with Great Lent? Instead of spending less time cooking (having salads, and things that take little time to prepare), we involve ourselves in observing the letter of the law of Lent, so that there are no dairy products, no fish, no meat, no oil of the wrong sort in the food, and we spend three times as long making this food. We even go to the Seventh Day Adventist shops, and get nice food that looks like chicken, but isn’t chicken (it’s soy), and nice hot dogs that look like hot dogs (but are soy), and nice turkey, and beef things that look like something they’re not. They look good – they taste good – but they are probably not all that pleasing to God. I suppose they are pleasing to the palate, but it is not pleasing to God when we go about observing Lent like this. Is our God our stomach, and our taste buds? We have to ask ourselves this.

The fulfillment of Great Lent, the real fulfillment of Great Lent, is, and always has been, not in the letter of the law, observing the dietary prescriptions (which are good in themselves, but taken in the wrong direction, can be deadly), but in how I am to other human beings. What we are almost always forgetting in North America is that the other significant half of Great Lenten activity is almsgiving, caring for the poor, paying more special attention to people who are in need. That is one of the reasons why this lesson comes to us at this particular time. As this parable from the Saviour indicates, we have to take care of those who are around us. The need may not be a material need. The need may be a spiritual or an emotional need. People have all sorts of needs, and God gives each of us all sorts of different gifts in order to meet those needs. The Christian way is, and always has been: how can I serve? How can I help someone else?

N is about to be ordained to the priesthood in order to help in the nurturing of this flock, in nurturing those gifts that you all have, which are for the building up of the Body of Christ. Now you will have two priests here. Much more is going to be expected, somehow. God will give you more and more Grace also, but more will be expected.

What is important to remember, brothers, and sisters, is that the prescriptions that we have been given are indications of how we should go about our lives, but they are not rules. The Pharisees went wrong with the Ten Commandments, for instance, by losing sight of the foundation of the Ten Commandments, which was, and is, to this day: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6:5). And the Saviour added here: “and your neighbour as yourself" (Mark 12:31). All of that is in the Ten Commandments. The Pharisees enshrined the Ten Commandments in such a way that they had to be protected, and they invented thousands of other rules about how to live life in order to protect oneself from offending the great Ten Commandments. However, that again was all out of fear. The Lord is not interested in our being afraid of Him. The Apostle John says: “God is love” (1 John 4:16). He is right. God is love, and His relationship with you, and me is all about love. Fear comes from Big Red down below. Love, liberty, and life come from the living God who loves us, and is interested in our life, our eternal life. He is interested in our interior healing; He is interested in our well-being.

The Lord is not interested in holding swords over our heads, and threatening us all the time, even though sometimes when He disciplines us, it might feel like that. Anytime I have been disciplined by the Lord, I have definitely deserved it. I don’t as a result feel that God is “after me”, somehow. In the same way, in my childhood I got disciplined rather firmly, corporally, frequently. I don’t resent my parents, and grandparents, or even the teacher who embarrassed the life out of me in grade three (when I said “No” to her) when she slapped me over the knuckles with a ruler. I don’t resent it at all, and I was not afraid of them either, because I was very willful, very willful. It was difficult for people to put me on the right path, and it took a lot of pushing, and shoving, out of their love, to keep me on some sort of straight-and-narrow. The Lord does the same with you, and me in order to keep us well directed, and focussed.

It is important for us, brothers, and sisters, to keep our focus, and our priorities straight in the coming Lent, and that is to offer our fasting, our abstinence to the Lord out of love, so that we can spend more time with Him, and less time cooking. Don’t worry about the “exact” rules of everything in Great Lent. Worry about deepening your loving relationship with the Lord. That is the purpose of the whole thing. Be concerned about what you are doing for your brothers, and sisters, and how you can be good to them. It is about exactly those things that the Saviour is going to be asking you, and me at the end as He says in the Gospel today. He is going to be asking you, and me: How did you love me? How do you love me? How did you show your love for me? Let us ask the Lord to help us have our hearts attuned to Him, His love, His will, so that we will know what His will is, and do what He is asking us to do, quickly, with love, to His glory: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America