Meat Fare Sunday – Father Gavril Galev
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“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
When Saint Basil the Great, one of the wisest of his time, and even to this day in the history of humanity and Christianity, was asked what the greatest wisdom was, he being a philosopher and a wise man, answered simply: “The remembrance of death”!
Any person would anticipate, a sophisticated and wise answer which is to be expected from a person such as Saint Basil the Great, a philosopher, a sage and a scientist, and he only says in short: “The remembrance of death.”
Considering all things, if we stop and think a little more soberly and deeply, we will see that this is indeed the greatest wisdom. Because there is no greater wisdom than to stand at the right hand of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God and there to enjoy the eternal blessings that God has prepared for us. And the greatest madness, the greatest stupidity, is to be placed on His left, separated from God, and, in eternal suffering.
Remembering death is one of the best means to live a holy and sober life. When we think that every day could be our last, we will be careful how we live and what we do during the day. When we wake up the next day, we will thank God. Most of the time we sin and commit sins because we forget about death; conversely the memory of death prevents us from committing the sin that is offered to us, due to our weakness and persuasion of the devil.
In fact, heaven and hell are, the presence and absence of God. We ourselves know that, even in this life, when we are with God, even if we find ourselves in the most painful, most difficult situation, we are still calm and peaceful. And vice versa, when we are without God, even if we find ourselves in the most blessed community, and the most beautiful place, we will find a reason, some worm, to eat us up inside, and to suffer. This is the lesson of this Gospel reading that one thing is certain, and that is for those who were born, they will surely die and present themselves before God, and they will answer for their deeds, before Him.
And what are our deeds, if not our attitude towards our neighbour? Our neighbour is every, single person. Even the least, the weakest and the most disreputable, he is the image of God and our neighbour. And not only that, each of our neighbours is our Christ, because Christ identifies Himself with each one of them. We should see and recognize Christ in our neighbour and how we treat that person, (whoever he might be), that is how we actually treat Christ Himself, and that is how we treat Him.
God does not divide people on any basis. To Him, all are the same. God does not divide people by nationality or gender, or by beauty, wealth, fame, education, etcetera, but He makes only one division, and that is into good and bad, based in how that person lived their life on Earth. Yet in relation to this division, it is more accurate to say that we divide ourselves according to how we live our life. Accordingly, this is how we will answer on the last day in the terrible judgment.
God has prepared the kingdom of God for us from the beginning. However, not everyone will inherit the kingdom, but only those who have lived a righteous life in this world. All those who did not walk in the way of God and did not do His works, they will unfortunately be in the eternal fire, which has been prepared for satan and his angels. And that is why God separates the sheep from the goats, that is, the good people from the bad. Those who were humble, meek, merciful, good, from those who were defiant, proud, bad, who destroyed more than they built, etcetera. God gives His grace to the first ones, and the others remain graceless and cruel.
As you see, those good ones, who are on the right side, did not recognise their good deeds; “When, Oh Lord did we do this to You?” because, whatever they do, they do in the glory of God. With humility, with pure love, with pure intention, not exalting themselves, not thinking highly of themselves, not thinking of themselves that they are doing something extra ordinary and deserve to be on the right side, etc. So, this is simply love. It is the love that obliges me to do good, and simple – I most freely want to do good to the other.
Therefore the grace of God keeps them from becoming proud. In a way, He hides their good deeds from them so that they do not lose them. And on the other side, you see that the condemned do not even recognize their bad deeds. Why? Because they always have a high opinion of themselves, they are vainglorious and egocentric. The whole world revolves around them, they deserve honours and others are obliged to serve them. And do you see the difference between the good and the bad, the humble and the proud? The humble do not recognize their good deeds, the proud do not recognize their bad deeds.
When all is said and done it is our deeds that testify for us, and not what we think about ourselves. That is, when they come before the truth, before Jesus Christ, then there is no bribe, there is no justification, there is no circumvention or biased truth, but simply there is God’s truth and God’s law, and it leads us to this: “If you have done it to Me, or conversely, if you have not done it to Me, then, we will either be worthy, or we will be expelled.
And know well that God does not use the expression: “to one of the least of these” by chance. It is easy to do good to the one who does us good, it is easy to respect our parents, it is easy to respect the one who respects us, etc. However, it is more difficult to respect those who, in some way, have left a bad impression on someone, (it doesn’t have to be like that) but the problem arises as to who is inside us, in our projection.
And therefore, God compares Himself to such least ones. Someone who, so-called, bothers us in life, he will stand at the entrance to the kingdom of heaven tomorrow, and when we come to be examined, he will ask us the question “Do you love me?” and according to our answer, according to our state, whether we receive him or not, we will either enter or we will not enter. That is, we will stand on the right side or on the left side, that is, in the kingdom of heaven or in hell, that is, the eternal life of eternal joy and happiness or in eternal torment because we simply cannot imagine his face, we cannot imagine his presence, and therefore we will cast ourselves into eternal fire, that is actually hell, not love.
We are simply not ready for the place where we will have to love everyone. That is why we should prepare ourselves to love, we should prepare ourselves to serve, not to be served. We should prepare to forgive, and not ask to be forgiven, we should learn to give and not take…
And in the end, it is more blessed to hear the word: “Come thou blessed by my Father” than the words: “Depart from me thou cursed into eternal fire.”
Father Gavril Galev
Abbot of the Monastery “St. Clement of Ohrid”,
Kinglake, Melbourne, Australia
19 / 02 / 2023
