1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2; Matthew
25:31-46
On
this Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Church reminds us that true repentance is
not about obedience to religious rules as an end in itself. Our vocation in Lent is, instead, to open our
souls to receive the healing mercy of the Lord so that we may enter more fully into
His victory over sin and death at Pascha. The ultimate test of whether we will do so is not
how strictly we fast, how many services we attend, or how much money we give to
the poor. It is, instead, whether we will
become so receptive to Christ that His love permeates every dimension of our
character to the point that we treat our neighbors as He treats us. That is what repentance is all about. As
today’s gospel lesson reveals, every encounter with those who bear God’s image
is an encounter with Christ that anticipates our ultimate judgment, which will
reveal whether we have become living icons of His healing and restoration of
the human person.
As
we begin the last week before Great Lent, the Savior teaches us that how we
relate to our neighbors, especially those who are weak, suffering, and in need,
is the great test of our souls. How we treat the hungry and thirsty, the
stranger and the naked, the sick and the prisoner, manifests whether we are finding
the healing of our souls in Him. How we relate
to them is how we relate to Christ. We
must not distort the way of the Lord into a culturally accommodated faith that calls
for concern only for the wellbeing of our family, friends, and others with whom
we identify for some reason. That would
violate the requirement of the Old Testament law that “if a stranger
dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. The stranger
who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall
love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your
God.” (Lev. 19: 33-34) As Gentile
Christians, we were aliens to the heritage of Israel who have become heirs to
the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham through faith in the Savior. When we refuse to share the undeserved lovingkindness
that we have received with the strangers and foreigners of our day, we reject
Christ and show that we want no part of His Kingdom. If we abuse
or neglect anyone for any reason, if we celebrate cruelty and hatred toward any
child of God, we will demonstrate that our true allegiance is to some false god
of this world, not to the Savior Who identified Himself with “the least of
these.”
Especially
in Lent, we must reject the temptation of trying to impress God by doing good
deeds of any kind. Instead of obsessively
trying to justify ourselves through religious legalism, our calling is to take
the small and imperfect steps that we currently have the strength to take in conveying
His selfless love to other people. The
point is not to measure ourselves according to an impersonal standard of legal perfection,
but to grow in conforming our character to His as we serve those who need our
help. Doing so is an essential dimension
of being able to say truthfully, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
(Gal. 2:20)
On
this last day for consuming meat until Pascha, we must resist the temptation to
obsess about whether we will be able to follow all the Church’s canons about
fasting in Lent. The canons are
guidelines that we embrace for the healing of our souls with the guidance of a
spiritual father. They are not objective
impersonal laws from a book that everyone must obey in the same way. St. Paul taught that the key issue in the
question of whether to eat meat that had been sacrificed in pagan temples in
first-century Corinth was how doing so impacted others, for “food will
not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off
if we do. Only take care, lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling
block to the weak.” To cause another to
fall back into paganism would be to “sin against Christ.” His words show that what is truly at stake in
fasting is not a mere change in diet or the fulfillment of a law but learning
to relate to food in ways that help us to grow in loving and serving our
neighbors. By abstaining from the
richest and most satisfying dishes to the best of our ability, we gain strength
to reorient our desires from self-gratification toward blessing others. Eating a humble diet frees up resources to
give to the needy in whom we encounter Christ.
Lenten foods should be simple and keep well for future meals, thus
freeing up time and energy for prayer, spiritual reading, and serving our
neighbors. Even the smallest steps in
fasting can help us gain a measure of freedom from slavery to our passions as
we learn that we really can live without satisfying every desire for
pleasure. Especially for those who are new to fasting, it
is best to begin with small steps that we can take in a spiritually healthy
way. Trying to do more than we can do at this point in our journey is
invariably counterproductive and discouraging.
As people with responsibilities in our families, at work, at school, and
in relation to our needy neighbors, we must not deprive ourselves of
nourishment to the point that we lack the energy necessary to be good stewards of
our talents every day.
The spiritual
discipline of fasting is a tool for shifting the focus away from ourselves and
toward the Lord and our brothers and sisters in whom we encounter Him each
day. If we distort fasting into a
private religious accomplishment to prove how holy we are, we would do better
not to fast at all. That would simply be
a way of serving ourselves instead of God and those who bear His image and
likeness. In Lent, our focus must be set
squarely on Christ and His living icons, not on us. The fundamental calling of the Christian life
is to become like our Lord, Who offered Himself up for the salvation of the
world purely out of love. If we are
truly in communion with Him, then we too must offer up ourselves for our
neighbors. And as He taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, there are no
limits on what it means to be a neighbor to anyone who is in need, regardless
of nationality, culture, or anything else. Those who limit their concern for people according
to such standards place serving the kingdoms of this world before fidelity to
the Kingdom of God.
Discerning how to live faithfully
is not a matter of cold-blooded rational calculation or meeting objective
standards, but of being so conformed to Christ that we become a “living
sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1) such that the Savior’s healing of fallen humanity
becomes present, active, and effective in us.
We must grow as persons in communion with Christ and all those who bear
His image and likeness, refusing to define ourselves or anyone else according
to the divisions and circumstances of our fallen world.
Whenever
we encounter the Lord in a suffering person who needs our care, there is
inevitably a kind of judgment that reveals who we are. That is the case when we
see His living icons suffering today as the victims of natural disasters, wars,
persecution, and injustice. It is the case when those who bear His image are
sick, lonely, hungry, imprisoned, living in fear, or in any other circumstance
in which they need our friendship, care, and support. Since we do not yet respond generously to
everyone without a second thought, we must mindfully struggle against our
self-centeredness and indifference to the sufferings of others, especially
those whom the world tells us to ignore.
We must not shut the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ
when the darkness within us becomes apparent.
We must respond to what every judgment of our souls reveals by taking
the steps we can to open our hearts to Christ more fully.
Fasting
helps us acquire the humility necessary to do so, for it is such a hard struggle
for most of us to disappoint our stomachs and tastebuds even in small ways. Serving
our suffering neighbors is also a teacher of humility, for most of us are
experts in coming up with excuses for disregarding them. When these disciplines reveal our weakness,
we must simply call on the mercy of the Lord from the depths of our hearts and
then take the next small steps that we have the strength to take on the blessed
path to the Kingdom. If we will do so throughout the remaining time
of our life and persist in returning to the path whenever we stray from it,
then we will have good hope of being among those surprised to hear at the Last
Judgment, “’Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world.’”
Like the people on His right hand in the parable, that will not be
because we have calculated rationally how to earn a prize or met some legal
standard. Instead, it will be because
the self-emptying love and gracious mercy of Christ have permeated our souls
and become constitutive of our character.
Every day of Lent, and every day of our lives, let us live accordingly,
for “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My
brethren, you did it to Me.’”
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