Word for Meat Week

The Holy Church devotes this week to the remembrance of God's final judgment. Caring for our salvation, she wants to awaken in us repentance for our sins and strengthen our weak zeal for saving deeds. Let's follow her voice. Let us listen to the words of God about the great judgment, about the terrible judgment. Let us move our hearts to contrition. Oh, how great is this day - the day of sin and God's vengeance! Let them not delude themselves with dreams, let them not harbor sin in their souls with willful thoughts about the unrealizability of a threatening future. Self-will says to its own destruction: “Where is the promise of His coming?” The word of man is not true, but the word of God is true: the day of the terrible appearance of Christ will come, the day of the revelation of God’s judgment, the great day, the last day, after which there will be no days (Rom. 2:5; Matt. 13:40, 49). Let them not rush to sin, but hurry to repent. Life is a field where the wheat grows, and the tares also grow. They do not pull out the tares with careful condescension. The time of harvest will come, then the tares will not be spared (Matthew 13:39–40). The Lord does not hesitate to fulfill his promise: He only endures and waits to see if people will come to their senses, come to their senses, or decide to mourn their sins with bitter tears of repentance? There will be a trial. God spoke about it. Heaven and earth will pass by. The word of God will not pass away. The prophets of God announced general judgment (Isa. 34:1–6, 66:16–21; Joel. 3:7–17; Dan. 7:9–10; Mal. 3:14–18). The Psalms sing about the judgment of the universe: “He will judge the universe with righteousness” (Psalm 9:9, 93:23). The apostles preached: “to all... It is fitting for us to appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Cor. 5:10). The Son of God Himself, so full of love and mercy for us, repeated many times: “The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will reward each according to his deeds” (Matthew 16:27). This day will be terrible for everyone, especially terrible for those who have rejected Christ or those who have not fulfilled their loyalty to Him. Who will be the judge at that trial? Our Lord Jesus Christ - He who shed His blood for us, endured so much torment for our sins so that we would no longer live for sin - He whom we pledged to serve from the font to the tomb. Oh, how scary it will be for us to appear before Him, so ungrateful to Him! Whatever His appearance may be, it in itself will threateningly expose the insensitivity of Christians. “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven: and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Matthew 24:30). “They will look upon Him, His blood has broken” (John 19:37; Zech. 12:10). The coming of the Lord Jesus to judgment will no longer be the same as His coming to earth for our salvation. It will be majestic and formidable, so that the universe, disturbed by horror, will take on a new form. The Son of God will appear, surrounded by a host of angels, in the full majesty of the glory of the Son of God. “They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and much glory” (Matthew 24:30), “in the glory of his Father with his angels” (Matthew 16:27). “And I saw,” says the seer, “the throne was great, and He who sat on it”; “heaven and earth fled from His presence, and no place was found for them” (Apoc. 20:11). The kings of the earth and the nobles, along with the last slaves, will turn with horror and screaming to the mountains and stones, and cry, “Fall on us and cover us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Apoc. 6, 16–17). My friends! Can thought embrace the glory of God, who appears in his terrible truth? Can a tight heart contain all the horror with which the entire universe will tremble at the appearance of this glory of the Infinite? Repent, wash yourself with tears, my poor soul; Turn to the Lord your God, so that the truth of your contrite faith will support you, poor, on the day of wrath and the revelation of God’s judgment. What a trial! What a comprehensive judgment! From earth to hell is its domain; from people to fallen spirits, everyone will come to listen to the last saying about eternal, unchanging eternity (Jude 1:6; 1 Cor. 6:3). Living and dead, pagan and Jew, believer and unbeliever - people of all times and all countries will appear to give an account of their deeds (Matt. 25:32; Rom. 2:6-12; Acts 10:42, 17:31). How many are there among us who would agree to die rather than endure conviction of sin before their own kind! What kind of horror will strike this hypocritical shame, or more precisely, this wicked pride, when dark deeds are revealed to the whole universe? Humble yourself, my poor soul, sincerely reveal your sins to the mediator between you and God, so as not to subject you to worldwide shame. The heart trembles, the inside trembles, when we imagine that all our secret and open deeds will be discovered there. And this will undoubtedly happen. The subject of judgment will be all our deeds, good and bad, “let everyone receive what he has done with his body, either good or evil” (2 Cor. 5:10), and “everyone will be rewarded according to his deeds” (Rom. 2:6). Malice, deceit, hatred, anger, theft, drunkenness, carnal impurities, pride, vanity - everything will be consigned to shame. How many words of idleness flow from our lips! They are even taken for cute jokes. They won't look at it that way. There, for every idle word, you will have to give an answer (Matthew 12:36). All secret thoughts, all secret intentions, all movements of the heart, all desires carefully kept from the eyes of another, will all be revealed, no matter how black they are, no matter how dirty, all will be exposed to reproof and judgment. “...The Lord will come, Who will bring the secret darkness into light and reveal the counsels of the heart...” (1 Cor. 4:5). How can we not cry, how can we not sob about such a terrible future that threatens us? How much hypocrisy is hidden here in our affairs! How much pretense, how much deceit in the plans! They cover up vile deeds with the most beautiful appearance, and at the price of the wickedness of the heart they buy the approval of people. ABOUT! there they will remove this mask of wickedness from our deeds and intentions, and their vileness will be revealed in their exact, ugly form. There it will be revealed that these fashions of the time, these exquisite outfits are not only vanity, but also dirty traces of the dirty lusts of the heart. Father is unreasonable! frivolous mother! son of a forgetful age! absent-minded comrade! How many temptations you sow to the destruction of hearts! How many lessons of wickedness do you teach to immature and imprudent souls? ABOUT! stop. Vain wife! Do you understand, do you see that your attire, your luxurious clothes, your invented beauty are the network of the murderer of the devil, if not by your intention, then by your frivolity. How will you answer there for the destruction of the souls of those who were tempted, whether from your intentions, or from your frivolity? “If anyone causes one of these little ones to stumble,” it would be better for him if a millstone were hung on his neck and he drowned in the sea (Matthew 18:6). The time will come when the angels of God will gather “all temptations and those who do lawlessness, and throw them into the furnace of fire” (Matthew 13:41-42). Contrite, my soul, while there is still a time of fruitless contrition, lament over all the gifts that you received from the grace of God and lost! You will give a terrible answer for the talents entrusted to you. ABOUT! woe to me, a sinner, who has received so much both from the providential hand of God and from the grace of my Christ Jesus. What will I bring, what will I return to You, my generous Lord! My laziness and negligence keep me on the quiet bed of sin, in idleness and vanity. Woe to me, who desecrated the pure robe of baptism! How many times, my Lord, have You awakened me to repentance both through bodily illnesses and sorrowful encounters in life! As soon as I woke up from my sleep, I fell asleep again to my Savior! Before Your terrible judgment, turn my heart to You - my God, do not reject me, who deviates from You, do not forsake me, who forsakes You, my God my Savior! Don’t you think, my friends, that it will be difficult there to test all the affairs and all the peoples of the earth? The Seer of Mysteries tells us: “And I saw the dead, small and great, of different states, standing before God, and the books were despised, and another book was opened, which was a living thing, and the dead received judgment from those written in the books according to their deeds” (Apoc. 20:12). What kind of folded books are these, by which the dead are judged? What is this other book called the book of life? These are signs of the omniscience of God, who has no need for books, for whom all our deeds are known. Always righteous and omniscient - He strictly distinguishes the deeds of the righteous from the deeds of sinners. Always good - He does not ignore a single feat of obedience to His will, not a single tear of repentance is hidden from Him, the cup of icy water given in His name is known to Him; He has already appointed the reward of life for those who love Him. But, alas! Just as there are not many righteous people, how many unrighteous people are listed in His righteous omniscience. The first is one part, one book; there are many parts of the latter, many books. According to this omniscience, righteous and good, He will pronounce the final decision on the eternal fate of people and tribes. And everyone's conscience will show everyone his deeds there. If it is dark here with us, if here it forgets a lot, leaves out a lot, darkened by passions and vanities: there it will be enlightened. The light of God's truth will dispel its darkness. “The Lord will come, who will bring the secret darkness into light, and will reveal the counsels of the heart” (1 Cor. 4:5). Conscience, illuminated by this light, will show us all the rows of the past, the rows of thoughts, movements, desires and deeds. Do not forget also: when the great harvest comes for the field of affairs of the world, the angels will be the harvesters, who will separate the tares from the wheat, the wicked from the godly. Let us awaken - those sleeping in sins, let us rise from the sleep of self-indulgence, so that Christ will illuminate us, before that terrible illumination of righteousness (Eph. 5:14). How strict, how precisely fair the final judgment will be! If the Lord knows everything, if He is as just as He is powerful, then how terrible His judgment will be! “In flaming fire He will take vengeance on those who do not know Him and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:8). They will not look at the faces there; the Judge will be holy and righteous (Rom. 2:11). No one and nothing will protect us at this trial - neither friends, nor relatives, nor those whom we flattered in the hope of their strength, each of them will answer for himself (Eph. 6:9). The Lord of Nations will stand there, like the last subject, anxiously awaiting the verdict. There everyone will matter as much as his virtues mean. We are accustomed to resting our carelessness with hope in the goodness of God. There we will meet one truth - it will distinguish in us the holy hope from the careless and blasphemous hope. He will reveal to us both the measure of our strength and the measure of our weaknesses; will take into account the measure of our methods and our poverty. Woe and misfortune to “every soul that does evil,” but first to “the Jew, then to the Greek” (Rom. 2:9) - first to a Christian, then to someone who does not know Christ. Much will be exacted from me, the unfortunate one, who has been given more than another (Luke 12:47-48). My friends! “Take heed to yourselves, so that your hearts are not weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life;... watch at all times and pray, that you may be worthy to escape all these things to come, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:34-36). It is not given to us to know when the terrible day will come, but it is open that it will undoubtedly come - and we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. Let us stock up on the oil of good works, so that our lamps do not go out when there is nowhere to get the oil (Matthew 25:7). I fall before You, my Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God! Reward us not according to our deeds, and let not our deeds anger You. Have mercy on us according to Your mercy; grant to see You in peace and joy, at least among the very last of Your servants, to the glory of Yours and the Father and the Holy Spirit who are consubstantial with You. Amen. You might be interested in: