February 19, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
Sunday of the Last Judgment, February 1
19, 2012
Luke 15:11-32
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Brothers and Sisters, today is what the Church calls the Sunday of the Last Judgment. It is one
of the preparatory Sundays that lead us into the holy season of Lent.
Now, according to our Holy Faith, there are actually two judgments. The first one takes place
during the period of time after we die, and it iis
s commonly called the “particular judgment.” Of
course the soul of the one who has died is in eternity, where there is no time, but the Church
Fathers have always taught that, in human or temporal time, this judgment takes place on the
fortieth day after death. And at this judgment we will learn where the Lord wishes us to dwell
until the final or Last Judgment, which will occur at His Second Coming, when the world as we
know it will come to an end and all those that have ever
lived will be summoned to judgment.
dgment.
Of course our salvation is given as a free gift of God.
We cannot “earn” it by our works; we can only properly
dispose our soul in order to receive it. And this
“salvation”—or
or theosis, to use the correct theological
term in Orthodoxy--actually begins in this very life and
comes to its full fruition after we die, if we die a
righteous and repentant death. God’s forgiveness of
our sins is a free gift, but we must ask for it, and we
must also genuinely repent—that
that is, turn away from our
former sins
s and change our present manner of living.
The Last Judgment is very important in Orthodox
Christianity—much
much more so, I think, than it seems to be in Western Christianity from what I see
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February 19, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
and hear. It’s not at all uncommon, especially in the old world Orth
Orthodox
odox countries, but also in
traditional Orthodox churches in this country, to see a huge fresco of the Last Judgment on the
western wall of the church. This enables us to see it as we leave the church after services and
are therefore reminded, as we go ou
out into the world to resume our day-to--day life, that a
judgment is truly and indeed coming
coming—both
both the Particular Judgment and the Last Judgment.
Also, in Orthodox theology, it’s important to know that we do not teach or believe that God
created either heaven
n or hell. This may come as a surprise, but of course heaven and hell, which
exist in eternity and outside this created universe, are not “places”. Rather, He Himself, God the
Holy Trinity, is heaven or hell. If we have achieved salvation we are in the Lord’s
L presence and
are inexpressibly united to Him in unending bliss
bliss—and this is our heaven. But if we have lost our
salvation by not repenting of our sins here on earth, we are still in His presence, but that is an
experience of hell. Why is this? Because God is love. If we have rejected His saving love during
our life on earth by refusing to learn, by not repenting, changing, growing, and obeying His
commandments, then the experience of His love in the next world will be a sheer torment for us.
It will be hell.
Our godly Fathers in the Faith preceded this Sunday with two Sundays on which the Gospel
parables spoke to us of God’s unfathomable and perfect love and mercy. But, so that we don’t
take this for granted and assume, like some Protestants, tha
thatt we are already “saved”, as they
say, the Fathers on this Sunday bring the awesome scene of the Final Judgment before our eyes
and ask us to look fully and openly at it, without flinching or turning away, however difficult and
disturbing this might be, forr this will help us to remember that we must still continue to repent
and follow the Lord in every single way that He, in the Gospels, has asked us to do.
This is also what we call Meatfare Sunday. This means that it is the last day on which the faithful
faithfu
are permitted to eat meat of any kind until Pascha. Most monks and nuns never eat meat
anyway, because the Holy Fathers discovered quite early on that the flesh meats of warm-
warm
blooded animals actually give energy to some of the passions, particularly lust
lus and anger. But
during the fasting seasons and fast days of the Church year the laity is also asked to follow this
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February 19, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
same fast. Rather wonderfully, this puts us in a relationship to animals such as Adam and Eve
had in the Garden before the Fall, when they did not kill animals for food. (God blessed man to
eat animals as necessary only after the Fall, but He did not require us to do so.) During Lent,
which is for this reason also called the Great Fast, we will live at peace with the animal kingdom.
In another
ther week we will also lay side all dairy products so that not only will be killing animals for
food, but we will not be taking anything from them, either, such as milk or eggs. We will get our
protein in other ways. And these ways are, by the way, many.
In terms of the Last Judgment, which follows Christ’s Second Coming into the world, no one
knows when this will occur. The Lord did mention specific signs that we could watch for, and said
that those who are paying attention will see that we are getti
getting
ng close to the end. Some of those
signs are already appearing now, but there are still other even more significant signs to come.
When all of the signs have come to pass
pass—and
and some of them may be recognizable even to
unbelievers, by the way—Jesus
Jesus Christ will appear, like lightning flashing across the heavens and,
Scripture tells us, a river of boiling fire will go before Him in order to purify all of our sick old
world of its sin and defilements. Some people have wondered if this “river of fire” might take
ta the
form of a nuclear holocaust. But we don’t know. However, it’s for sure that until 50 or 60 years
ago there was no way for man to destroy life on earth by fire until the beginning of the nuclear
age, so perhaps this is another of the “signs”? As I said, we don’t know; at least we don’t know
for sure, and so we can’t dwell on it.
But when all of this has happened at the arrival of the Redeemer and Judge, and “when the
angels have sounded the trumpets, then the entire human race will at once come together
to from
the ends of the earth and from all the elements to Jerusalem…Yet each person will be with his
own body and soul, all of which will have been transfigured and made incorruptible….With a
single word, the Lord will separate the righteous from the sinners”, and this will be on the basis
of the works of mercy and compassion which we have performed in this life or, perhaps, willfully
withheld from others. (Synaxarion
Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion).
Pentecostarion)
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February 19, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
“According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, both the righteous and the sinners will be judged
according to six requirements: giving food to the hungry, providing drink to the thirsty, showing
hospitality to the stranger [not just to our friends, please note!]
note!],, clothing the naked, visiting the
sick, and visiting prisoners.” (Ibid.)
Brothers and sisters, this is the simple plan, the “map” by which we must order our whole lives
and set our short and long-term
term goals. “By rendering these acts of compassion to the least of
our brothers, we perform them for Christ Himself [as the Lord told us]. Since these six
requirements can be carried out by everyone, everywhere on earth [including, by the way, even
non-Christians],
Christians], it can be understood why His judgment shall be a just one.
“The torments, as the Holy Gospel has handed down, are the following: the wailing and the
gnashing of teeth from despair, being consumed by the worm that never dies, the agony from
the unquenchable fire [of God’s love, which was rejected by sinners during their lifetime], and
being cast into the outer darkness.” (Ibid.)
The Orthodox Church “accepts all these doctrines [and more, which we do not have time to go
into in a sermon] without any concealment. In addition, she holds that the ‘delight’ and the
‘kingdom of heaven’ inherited by the saved are their life together with God and the saints and
their continuous illumination and ascent; whereas ‘torments’ and ‘darkness’ are the estrangement
from God and the wasting away of the souls of the damned, tormented by an evil conscience.
They are deprived of the illumination that comes from God because of their negligence and desire
for fleeting pleasures.” (Ibid)
St. Augustine of Hippo, in Africa in the 5th century, had a very interesting reflection
re on the Last
Judgment. He summed everything up with the following formula: Let us not resist the First
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February 19, 2012 Sunday Sermon
Fr Ambrose Young
Entrance of the Theotokos Skete
Coming of Christ as a babe in Bethlehem, and His life here on earth, so that we may not dread
the Second Coming!
You know, this formula is really
lly a wonderful way to look at it. The fact of the matter is that if we
play attention now, accepting Christ as our Lord and Savior, following His commandments and
not putting this off to some distant future time when we “might” be retired and have more time,
t
but if we do it right now, every day, then we really have nothing to fear from the Last Judgment.
But let us take nothing for granted
granted; let us assume nothing.
This is the message of the Sunday of the Last Judgment.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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