MeatFare Sunday

By Bp. Nikolai Velimirovic of Ochrid

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 divides 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 hun-gred, 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 unto one of these, ye did it not to Me." And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.

Statisticians reckon that there are a milliard* and a half people living on earth.

Of this one and a half milliard, no one person can, by using his mental processes, tell you what will happen to the world at the end of time, and what will happen to us when we die. And all those thousands of millions of human beings who have lived on earth before us had no way, through their mental processes, of telling us, with firmness and certainty, about the end of the world and what awaits us after death - anything that we could, with our minds and our hearts, accept as true. Our life is short and our days are num-bered, but time is long - counted in hundreds and thousands of years. Who among us can reach out from the confines of time to its end, and see the last things, and inform the rest of us, saying: "Thus and so will it be at the last edge of time; thus and so with the world and thus and so with you men"?

No-one. Truly, no-one of all men living, unless there were one who could convince us that he had entered into the mind of the Creator of the world and mankind, and seen the whole plan of creation, and that he was alive and aware before the beginning of the world, and had a clear view of the end of time and the events that will mark the end. Is there such a man among the milliards who are alive at this time? Has there been such a one from the beginning of the world till now? No; there neither is nor has been. There have been seers and prophets who, not from their own minds but from God's revelation, have said something - something brief and incomplete - about what will be at the end, not so much with the intention of giving an exact description of the end of the world as, by God's providence, to warn men through their visions to turn back from the way of lawlessness, and to repent and think more about the fateful time that is to come than about the petty and transitory things that, like a cloud, conceal the fiery and terrible event by which the whole of human life in the world, and the existence of the very world itself, and the stars in their courses and the cycle of day and night, will

One, and One only, has spoken to us clearly and definitely about all that will come to pass at the end of time: the Lord Jesus Christ. Were anyone soever to say what He said about the end of the world, we would not believe him, though he were the greatest sage living. Were he to speak from his human understanding, and not from God's proven revelation, we would not believe him. For human understanding and human logic, however great they may be, are too puny to reach to the world's beginning and its end.

Understanding is useless where vision is needed. We need a seer, who sees as clearly as we see the sun - to see the whole world, from its beginning to its end, and the beginning and the end themselves. There has only ever been one such: the Lord Jesus Christ. Him alone we can and must believe when He tells us what will happen at the end. For all that He prophesied has come to pass, both to individuals such as Peter and Judas and the other apostles, to specific peoples, such as the Jews, and to specific places, such as Jerusalem, Capernaum, Bethsaida and Chorazin, and to the Church of God, founded in His blood. Only His prophecy of the events at the very end of the world, of its end and of the Last Judgement, has not yet been fulfilled. But he who has eyes to see can see clearly that, in our day, those events that He told us would be signs of the end's approach have already begun to appear in the world.

Have not many peddlers of happiness appeared, seeking to replace Christ and His teaching with themselves and their teaching? Has not nation risen up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom? Does not the earth tremble, and our hearts with it, at the many wars and revolutions that cover our plan-et? Do not many betray Christ, and many forsake His Church? Has not iniquity abounded, and the love of many grown cold? Has not the Gospel of Christ been preached throughout the world, as a testimony to all nations (Matthew 24:3-14)? It is true that the worst is yet to come, but it is coming quickly and without delay. It is true that the Antichrist has not yet appeared, but his forerunners and prophets are in every nation. It is true that the most catastrophic misfortune that there has ever been since the world began is not yet with us, nor the unbearable death-rattle, but the catastrophe can clearly be seen by all those spiritual men who are awaiting Christ's coming. It is true that the sun has not yet been darkened nor the moon left without its light, nor the stars fallen from heaven - but when this comes to pass, there will be no more writing or speaking about it. Men's hearts will be filled with fear and trembling, men's tongues will be frozen and men's eyes will stare into the fearsome darkness, on an earth without day and a heaven without stars. All at once, in this darkess, the sign of the Son of Man will appear, a resplendent Cross stretching from east to west and from north to south, of a brightness never achieved by the sun above our heads. And then all men on earth will see the Lord Jesus sitting on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And the angelic host will sound the trumpet, and all the nations on earth will be gathered before Him; the trumpet will sound for an assembly such as there has never been from the foundation of the world, and for the Judgement that is once and for all.

All these signs and events that will come to pass at the end of the world and of time are described in another place in the Holy Gospel. Today's Gospel, though, describes the final settling of accounts between time and eternity, between heaven and earth, between God and mankind. It describes the Last Judgement and the way in which it, the day of the Lord's anger (Zephaniah 2:2), will come to pass. It describes for us that fearsome moment - most joyful for the righteous - when God's mercy will give place to God's justice. When it will be too late for good works, and too late for repentance.

When lamentation will receive no reply, and when our tears will no longer fall on the angels' hands.

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. As in the parable of the Prodigal Son, where God is seen as a man, so here Christ is called the Son of Man. It is He, and none other than He. When He comes into the world the second time, He will not come unknown and humble, as He did the first time, but openly and in great glory. By this glory is meant, firstly, the glory that Christ had in eternity before the world began (John 17:5), and secondly the glory of the Victor over Satan, over the old world and over death. Не does not come alone, but with all the holy angels, whose number is uncount-able, and He comes with them because they, as God's servants and warriors, took part both in the battle against evil and in the victory over it. It is His joy to share the glory with them. And to emphasise the sublime nature of this event, it is specially stated that all the angels will come with the Lord. There is no other event at which it is mentioned that all God's angels are present.

They have always appeared in greater or lesser numbers, but at the Last Judgement they will all be present, gathered around the King of glory.

Many seers, in both the former and the latter days, have beheld the throne of glory (Isaiah 6:1; Daniel 7:9; Revelation 4:2, 20:4). This throne signifies the heavenly powers, on whom the Lord is enthroned. It is the throne of glory and victory, on which the heavenly Father is seated, and on which the Lord Christ took His place after His victory (Revelation 3:21). Oh, how majestic the Lord's coming will be, surrounded by such strange and fearsome events! The Prophet Isaiah, in his discernment, foretold: "Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with His chariots like a whirlwind" (Isaiah 66:15); Daniel beheld, at that coming, that a fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him; thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him; the judgement was set, and the books were opened (Daniel 7:10).

And when the Lord comes in glory and sits on His throne, then all nations shall be gathered before Him; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Many of the Fathers questioned about the place in which Christ would judge all the nations. Quoting the Prophet Joel, they reckoned that the Judgement would take place in the valley of Jehoshaphat, where King Jehoshaphat, with no fighting or use of arms, had such a complete victory over the Moabites and the Ammonites that none of the enemy remained alive II Chronicles 20). And the Prophet Joel said: "Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about" (Joel 3:12). Perhaps the Lord's throne will be placed over that valley, but there is no valley in the world in which all nations and peoples could be gathered, the living and the dead from the beginning to the end of the world, who would be numbered in many billions. The whole of the earth's surface, with all the oceans added, would not give enough space for all the men who have ever lived on earth to be able to stand together. If this were just a gathering of souls, then it might be possible to bring them all together in the valley of Jehoshaphat, but as it will be of men in the body - for the dead will arise with their bodies - then the prophet's words must be understood in a figurative way. The valley of Jehoshaphat is the whole world, from furthest east to furthest west; and, as God aforetime showed His power and judgement in the valley of Jehoshaphat, so He will on the last day show this same power and judgement over the whole human race.

And He shall separate them one from the other. In one moment, all those gathered together will be separated - as a shepherd, with his voice, sends the sheep to one side and the goats to the other - some to the left and some to the right, as by an irresistible magnetic force, in such a way that none can move from the left side to the right, or from the right side to 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." At the beginning, Christ calls Himself the Son of Man - that is, the Son of God - and He here calls Himself the King, for the kingdom and the power and the glory are given to Him. "Come, ye blessed of My Father." They are truly blessed whom Christ calls blessed, for God's blessing contains in itself all the good things and all the joy and grace of heaven.

Why does the Lord not say "My blessed," but "the blessed of My Father"?

Because He is the only Son of God, the only-begotten and uncreated, from all eternity and in all eternity, and the righteous are, by God's blessing, adopted, and thus become as brothers to Christ. God calls the righteous to receive the kingdom that He has prepared for them from the foundation of the world. This means that God, even before the creation of mankind, had prepared the kingdom for him. Before He made Adam, all was made ready for his life in Paradise. A whole kingdom, resplendent in light, only awaited its king. Then God led Adam into this kingdom, and the kingdom was completed. Thus God, from the beginning, prepared the kingdom for the righteous. It was only awaiting its rulers, with Christ the King Himself at their head.

Calling the righteous into the kingdom, the Judge immediately

explained why He was giving it to them:

"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." At this wonderful explanation, the righteous hesitantly and meekly asked the King when they had seen Him hungry and thirsty, naked and sick, and when they had done all this for Him. To this, the King once more gave a wonderful reply: "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."

This whole explanation has two meanings: an outward and an inward. The outward meaning is clear to all. He who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked and shelter to the stranger has done this to the Lord. He who visits the sick or those in prison has done this to the Lord. For it is said in the Old Testament: "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will He pay him again" (Proverbs 19:17). The Lord tests our hearts through those who seek our help.

God makes use of nothing from us for Himself: He needs nothing. He who created bread cannot be hungry, nor He who created water be thirsty. He who clothes His whole creation cannot be naked, nor He who is the source of health be sick, nor He who is the Lord of lords be a captive. But He seeks that we give alms, in order, in this way, to soften and ennoble our hearts. God is able, in His almighty power, to make all men at once rich and satiated, clothed and satisfied. But He lets men experience hunger and thirst, sickness, suffering and poverty, for two reasons: firstly, that those who endure these things will, by this means, have their hearts softened and ennobled, and will turn to God, worshipping Him with faith and prayer; and secondly, that a man may sense his own suffering in that of others, his humiliation in that of others, and come to understand the brotherhood and unity of all people on earth through the living God, the Creator and Provider of all on earth. The Lord desires mercy of us - mercy above all else. For he knows that mercy is the way in which faith in God, hope in God and love for God can be restored

This is the outward meaning. The inner meaning has to do with Christ within us ourselves. In every pure thought of our minds, in every noble feeling of our hearts and in every lofty aspiration of our souls towards the accomplishing of good, Christ reveals Himself within us by the power of the Holy Spirit. He calls all these pure thoughts, noble feelings and lofty aspirations His little, or His least, brethren. He so names them because they are in us in an insignificant minority compared with the great field of worldly dross and evil within us. If our mind hungers for God, and we feed it, we have fed Christ within us: if our heart is bare of every good and noble thing that is of God, and we clothe it, we have clothed Christ within us; if our soul is sick and imprisoned by our evil being, our evil actions, and we are mindful of it and visit it, we have visited Christ within us. In brief, if this other being within us, that once took pride of place and that represents the righteous man, is subjugated and humiliated by the evil and sinful man within us, and we give this righteous man protection, we are protecting Christ within our-selves. This righteous man within us is very, very small, and the sinner within us is a veritable Goliath. But this righteous man within us is Christ's little brother, and the sinner within us is the Goliath-like enemy of Christ. If, then, we protect the righteous man within us, if we free him, strengthen him and bring him to the light; if we raise him up above the sinner, so that he is completely dominant over the sinner and we could say with the Apostle Paul: "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20) - then we shall be called blessed, and shall hear the King's words at the Last Judgement:

"Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

But to those on the left, the Judge will say: "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." The Judgement is dreadful, but it is righteous. And so the King calls the righteous to Himself, and gives them the Kingdom, while He drives the sinners from Him and sends them into eternal fire, into the evil company of the devil and his servants. (St Basil the Great, in his treatise "On the Last Judgement" [No. 14], says: "If there is any end to eternal torment, then it follows that there is an end to eternal life. But, as it is impossible to imagine an end to eternal life, how is it possible to imagine an end to eternal torment?"). What the Lord does not say is very important: that eternal fire is prepared for sinners from the foundation of the world, as the Kingdom is for the righteous.

What does this mean? It is absolutely clear that the Lord prepared the eternal fire only for the devil and his angels, and that He prepared the Kingdom for all men from the foundation of the world. For God will have all men to be saved (I Timothy 2:4; cf. Matthew 18:14; John 3:16; II Peter 3:9; Isaiah 45:22), and that not one perish. Therefore, God did not intend men to perish, but to be saved; neither did He prepare in advance the devil's fire for them, but He prepared His Kingdom, and this alone. It is clear from this, that they who say of a sinner: "he is predestined to be a sinner", are astray in their thinking. Were he thus predestined, this would not be from God but from the man himself. That this is not predestined for him by God is seen in the fact that God did not prepare in advance any sort of place of torment for men, but only for the devil. Therefore, at the Last Judgement, the righteous Judge will have no place to which to send the sinners but the dark realm of the devil.

And that it is in His justice that the Judge sends them there is clear from the fact that they, during their earthly lives, fell right away from God, and gave themselves to the devil's service.

Pronouncing judgement on the sinners on His left, the King immediately explains to them why they are accursed, and why He is sending them into eternal fire: "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." They had, then, done none of those things that the righteous on the right hand had done. Listening to these words from the King, the sinners asked, like the righteous: "Lord, when saw we Thee a hungred or athirst ...?" The Lord replied: "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me."

The whole of this explanation that the King gave the sinners also has two meanings - an outward and an inward - as in the first instance, with the righteous. The sinners were darkened in mind, hard of heart and with souls of evil intent towards their hungry and thirsty, naked, sick and captive brethren on earth. They were unable, with their gross minds, to perceive that Christ was calling them to mercy through their poor and suffering brethren. Their hard hearts could not be softened by the tears of others. Neither could Christ's example and that of His saints turn their evil-intentioned souls to desire good, and do it. And so, being unmerciful to Christ in their brethren, they were unmerciful to Christ in themselves. They deliberately extinguished all pure thoughts as soon as they were formed, replacing them with impure and blasphemous thoughts; they uprooted all noble feelings in their hearts as soon as they were formed, replacing them with mercilessness, lust and selfishness; they quickly and harshly suppressed every desire in their souls to do some good thing - following God's commandments - and in their place called forth the desire to do evil to men, and sin to provoke God's anger. And so Christ's least brother in them - that is, the righteous man in them - was crucified, killed and buried, and the dark Goliath they had nurtured - the unrighteous man in them, or the devil himself - remained as the victor on the field of battle. What can God do with such as these? Can He receive into His Kingdom those who have completely driven this Kingdom out of them-selves? Can He call to Himself those who have uprooted in themselves all likeness to God, and who have proclaimed themselves, both secretly in their hearts and openly before the world, to be God's enemies and the devil's servants? No; they have, by their own free choice, become the devil's servants, and the Judge will, at the Last Judgement, send them to keep company with those with whom, during their lifetime, they openly associated - in the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his servants. Directly after this, that process that is the greatest and yet the briefest in the history of the created world comes to an end. They (the sinners) will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. Life and torment are here set against each other. Where there is life, there is no torment; where there is tor-ment, there is no life. Indeed, the fullness of life excludes torment. The heavenly Kingdom confers the fullness of life, while the abode of the devil gives torment, and torment alone, without the life that comes from God. We see, in this earthly life, how the soul of a sinful man, that has little life within it (i.e: little of God), is filled with far greater torment than the soul of a righteous man, that has more life within it (i.e: more of God). As was wisely said in olden times: "The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days ... a dreadful sound is in his ears ... he believeth not that he shall return out of darkness, and he is waited for of the sword ... Trouble and anguish shall make him afraid, they shall prevail against him, as a king ready to the battle. For he stretcheth out his hand against God" (Job 15:20-25). So, then, this time on earth is great torment for the sinner. And the sinner finds it harder to bear the slightest suffering in this life than the righteous man, for only he who has life in himself can bear torment, scorn suffering, and, overcoming all the evil of the world, can rejoice. Life and joy are indivisible. And so Christ Himself says to the righteous, whom the world pillories, persecutes and reviles:

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad!" (Matthew 5:12).

The whole of this our earthly life is but a pale shadow of life - real life, full life - in the Kingdom of God, as all suffering on earth is only a pale shadow of the terrible torment of sinners in hell. (In the Apophthegmata Patrum [the alphabetical collection of the sayings of the Desert Fathers], we read: They asked some great elder: "How, father, do you so patiently bear such labours?" The elder replied: "All my toil in this life is not equal to one day of torment".) Life on earth - however sublime it may be - is mingled with torment, for here there is no fullness of life; as torment on earth - however great it may be - is mingled with life. But at the Last Judgement, life will be separated from torment. And the one and the other will be eternal.

What this eternity means cannot be grasped by our human understanding. To him whose delight will be one moment of beholding God's face, it will seem as though it has lasted thousands of years; and to him who will be tormented for one moment by the devil in hell, it will seem like thousands of years. For there will no longer be time as we know it - the rhythm of day and night - but there will be one day, which shall be known to the Lord (Zechariah 14:7; cf.Revelation 22:5). There will be no other sun but God, and this sun shall not rise and set, that eternity should be counted in days as time is now reckoned. The blessed will reckon eternity in terms of their joy, and the tormented sinners in terms of their torments.

This, therefore, is how the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the last and greatest event that was to take place in time, on the edge of time and eternity.

And we believe that all this will literally come to pass, firstly because all the other predictions that Christ made have literally come to pass, and secondly because He is our greatest Friend and the One true Lover of mankind - and in perfect love there is no falsehood or error. Perfect love contains perfect truth.

If all this were not to come to pass, He would not have told us of it. But He did tell us, and it will come to pass. But He did not tell us of this in order to demonstrate His knowledge to men. No; He did not seek glory from men (John 5:41). He said it all for our salvation. He who has understanding, and who confesses Christ the Lord, can realize that he needs to know this in order to be saved. For the Lord did nothing, nor spoke any word, nor permitted anything to happen to Him during His earthly life, that was not for our salva-tion.

Let us therefore be wise and sober, keeping always before our spiritual eyes the image of the Last Judgement. This image has already turned many sinners from the way of destruction to the way of salvation. Our time is short, and when it has run out there is no more repentance. By our life in this brief time, we must make a decision that will be fateful for us in eternity: shall we be placed at the right hand, or at the left, of the King of glory? God has given us a short and simple task, but the reward and the punishment are vast, going far beyond the power of any human tongue to express them.

Let us then not waste a single day, for each day could be the last, decisive one; each day could bring the destruction of this world and the dawn of that long-awaited Day. (St Gregory the Dialogist says: "It is written: 'Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?' [James 4:4]. It follows that he who does not rejoice at the approaching end of the world shows that he is its friend, and therefore God's enemy. But such thoughts are far from the faithful, from those who know by faith that another life exists and who truly desire it." ["Homilies on the Gospel", Book I, Homily 1: "On the Signs of the End of the World]). May we be unashamed on the Day of the Lord's Anger; before the Lord and before the hosts of His angels and the many billions of the righteous and the saints. May we not be separated forever from the Lord, and from His angels and saints, and from our kinsmen and friends who will be at the right hand. But, together with the countless, resplendent hosts of angels and the righteous, may we sing the hymn of joy and victory: "Holy, holy, holy Lord of Sabaoth! Alleluia!". May we, together with all the heavenly host, glorify our Saviour and Lord, the Son, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit - the Trinity consubstantial and undivided, for all eternity. Amen.

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*Milliard: A Thousand Million (A Billion)