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

It is important to remember as we are about to enter Great Lent that the Apostle was just now talking to us about the freedom that we have as Christians. Freedom comes with living in a relationship of love with Jesus Christ. As we are entering Great Lent, it is important for us to be careful how we observe the customs of Great Lent. Some people are tempted to turn the observance of Great Lent into a sort of “reign of terror”, you might say, where we are afraid everyday of breaking some rule about what you can eat, and what you can’t eat.

The Apostle is talking today about how we are supposed to be behaving because of peoples’ sensitivities as to what has been offered to idols, and what has not, what it is right to eat, and what it is not right to eat. I’ve heard often enough in Vancouver in Chinese or Indian restaurants: What is safe to eat? It is all safe to eat for a Christian if you know what you are about. When you invoke Christ’s blessing upon the food, that food is offered to Him in thanksgiving. Our partaking of that food is in the context of Jesus Christ who is the Provider of that food. It is not the fault of the food if the people who are preparing it think that it has something to do with their idols. They are mistaken; we are not. We have the freedom to partake of this food as long as we invoke Christ’s blessing upon it. However, as the Apostle said, there are some people who just don’t quite “catch the drift” yet, and they are still bound with fear. They are afraid that something bad will happen if they eat food that has been offered to idols. For their sake, we don’t eat that food, but not because we don’t have the freedom, and not because we couldn’t eat it. However, because we are being sensitive to the fragility of our brothers, and sisters, we don’t eat it.

This is how it has to be, too, in Great Lent. Some people, because of health conditions, have blessings from their doctors, and their clergy to eat things that are not strictly according to the rules, because food is also in the category of medicine. For instance, if you are a diabetic (and some people are severe diabetics), and you don’t eat according to the rules, you can die. The doctors tell diabetics, for the sake of their life, and their health, that they must eat certain things in certain ways. They are given a particular blessing to eat, and do whatever they are doing. But the thing is that they have to pay attention to the sensitivities of their brothers, and sisters who are trying to observe the fast, and the abstinences correctly according to the custom. They can’t go and eat liberally whatever the doctors say they have to eat in front of everyone else as if to say: Ha ha! Look at me! (Which people are tempted to do from time to time.) That’s not right, because the diabetic, or whoever it is, has to be sensitive to the observance of the other people during Great Lent. He should guard whatever weakness there might be in the brother or sister who is trying to observe the fast carefully so as not to lead them into temptation by eating what he must eat but which the others shouldn’t eat. It is all about maturity in the love of Jesus Christ. Living as mature Christians, we have freedom in Christ.

When it comes to freedom in Christ, on this Sunday of the Last Judgement, we are presented with what will happen at the end of all things when everything is gathered up by God into the Kingdom. What will happen then? We live in a society which has all sorts of people being driven by fear about what might happen at the end, and about when this end will come. In their fear they try to be ready all the time for this. I remember since my childhood all sorts of stories about people who have heard from someone that the end of the world will come on this day or on that day. They drive up onto the top of a mountain, and they wait and they wait and they wait. Nothing happens, and they go down disappointed. This still does happen! People think they can have an advantage or something because they have some sort of secret knowledge about the end of the world, and they can be readier than anyone else. The Saviour, Himself, said: “Of that day or that hour no one knows, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). It is no-one’s business when it will happen.

Our business is to live a Christian life that is in the love of Jesus Christ, and that is pleasing to Jesus Christ. Then we will have real confidence that everything will be well, and correct, and that we will have life in the Kingdom. As I have said before in many places, we are standing here today as we stand every Sunday, and at every Divine Liturgy, in the temple of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord. We sometimes sing a tropar that says: “Standing in the temple of Your glory, we think we are in heaven”. And we are. We are standing in the temple of the Lord in heaven right now in His Kingdom. This table on which the Divine Liturgy is being served is the throne of God. From this throne Christ Himself will feed us. We are saying in our prayers also that we are offering to Him everything, including the Second Coming (as if it had already happened). When we are standing here in the presence of the Lord, we are in the Kingdom as in the end, as if the end had already happened. We are standing eternally in the Kingdom with eternal life in the presence of the Lord of life, the Lord who is the Truth, the Life, the Way.

It is important for us as we are here week by week, day by day, in the temple of the Lord, to take confidence that His love for us is such that it doesn’t matter when the actual end of everything will come. What matters is that we love Him now, and we are faithful to Him now, and that this faithfulness will bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven because the Saviour loves us. As we say in other prayers, we acknowledge that He doesn’t want us to perish. He wants us to be with Him, to live with Him in the Kingdom. He does everything He can in order to bring us there with Him.

With our hearts, and our minds firmly fixed on the Saviour, let us live our lives in confidence in Him, offering our fasting, and our abstinence, and everything else to Him in love, because He is the Source of everything. He gives everything to us. Even if we work for it, He still gives it to us: it comes from Him. Let us glorify Him, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America