The period of Great Lent – a time of remembrance and return

to living according to the law of love given by God to man in the beginning

On the Sunday of the Last Judgment, His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian celebrated the Holy Liturgy at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Great Martyr George of Saint-Hubert. Among the clergy present were Protos. Maxim Morariu, the ecclesiarch of the cathedral, Rev. Fr. Mircea Panciuk and Rev. Fr. George Drăgan.

In the sermon pronounced, the hierarch illustrated the meanings of the liturgical period of Triodion, recalling and highlighting the main aspects of the first two Sundays of the Triod, aspects that will help in the spiritual ascent towards the great feast of Christ's Resurrection. Regarding today's Sunday, the hierarch emphasized the main aspects of the Gospel pericope reading during the Holy Liturgy:

"The Sunday of the Last Judgment, the third of the period of the Triodion, speaks of the fact that our lives will come, at the designated time, face to face with God, when our deeds will be weighed by God, the One who created the world and created us with a certain verticality and with certain values. If we want to live healthy, to be images of God, we must do it as the Architect of our life and world, who is God, thought it. In today's Gospel, we see the connection between our daily lives and the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven. We as humans are images of God, we are born with the image of God in us, and during our life, as we fulfill the Christian virtues, this image will help us to grow towards the likeness of God.

Everything we do in our life, which affects life or what happens around us, the people closer or further away from us in society, is reflected on us. When the time of judgment comes, we will be brought before the judgment of God. The Savior invites those who have done good deeds: Come, the blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Those who have done good things will wonder and ask when they did all this. Then God answers them: As you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, you did it to Me.

Many times we affirm that we are believers, that we trust the precepts of the Church, God's commandments, but our actions, unfortunately, show that we ignore what is happening to those around us. This is not really a Christian life. Love for God is reflected in love for those around us. One cannot exist without the other. The two commandments with which the Holy Scripture says that the law and the prophets are fulfilled are: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and your neighbor as yourself. In fact, there is only one law, that of love, but which has two directions, one towards God and one towards the neighbor. We cannot say we love God without loving our neighbor, and we cannot say we love our neighbor without loving God. All this we see in the contemporary world quite present. In such an informed world as we live in, we observe with sadness and pain the conflicts, wars, injustices and all other painful things happening around us and in different corners of the world. Important for us is the presence of the Church, which reminds us every time of the necessity of love towards God and towards the neighbor and the fact that the true Christian life requires attention towards God and towards the neighbour. The fact that we seek the stranger present among us, that we feed the hungry according to our means, that we visit the sick and sacrifice a little of our time for him, only shows that we are seeking Christ.

The period of Great Lent for which we are preparing is a period of spiritual exercise, both in soul and body - as we see from the example of today's Gospel. As we turn our attention and endeavor to help as much as we can the one next to us, we are taking care of God as well, and He, in turn, will take care of us.

Let us reflect and meditate deeply on this example, let us try to prepare ourselves for the coming period, that of Great Lent, a period in which the Church will remind us of all the wonderful things that God has done for us and for our salvation because we may arrive with joy at the great feast of the Resurrection of Christ."

At the end of the Holy Liturgy, the hierarch blessed those present.

(notes by Nun Ana Bulgariu)