Meatfare Sunday: Love Yes, But What Kind of Love?
By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos
By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos
“Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me” (Matt. 25:40)
1. Today’s Gospel reading comes to remind us of a great truth. Last Sunday the Holy Gospel spoke about the goodness of God the Father, who awaits His creature to return. But this must not make us forget His justice as well. God is not only a tender Father; He is also a just Judge. “Neither is His mercy without judgment, nor His judgment without mercy,” says Saint Basil the Great. He will judge the world, the Gospel tells us — and indeed not arbitrarily, but according to our deeds.
Thus today’s passage brings us face to face with the fact of judgment. And we say “fact,” because the universal judgment constitutes for our faith an eschatological certainty and reality, confessed in our Creed as an ecclesiastical belief:
“And He shall come again to judge the living and the dead…”
We are therefore called today to realize three things:
First, that our Judge will be Jesus Christ as God. Christ is Savior but also Judge. If the first time He came humbly to earth “to save the world,” now He will come “in His glory” to judge the world. He who became for us a “curse” upon the Cross has every right to judge us if we have allowed His sacrifice to remain inactive within us and within our society.
Second, He will judge not only Christians nor only pagans, as the Jews believed about God’s judgment. He will judge all people — Christians and non-Christians, believers and unbelievers.
Third, the basis of judgment — the criterion — will be love: that is, our attitude toward our fellow human beings. Universal judgment, therefore universal criterion — the same universal law of humanity in which all meet, Christians and non-Christians alike, both those who knew Christ and those who could not know Him and therefore remained far from His Gospel.
In this law there is no room for excuses or justifications. Hunger, thirst, nakedness, sickness, imprisonment cry out; they cannot remain hidden so that someone may claim he did not notice them. No one can ignore them unless he first ceases to have human feeling — unless he has completely degraded and impoverished the image of God within him.
2. The shocking greatness and dreadfulness of the hour of Judgment are painted in vivid colors by the hymns of the day:
“O, what an hour it will be then! When thrones are set and books opened, deeds examined, and the hidden things of darkness made public!”
Even the mere thought of the hour of judgment is terrifying, not only because it reminds us of our unpreparedness to appear before the tribunal of the dread Judge, but also because it reveals the tragedy of our life, which we spend in works of vanity that cannot endure the light of eternity.
We will not be justified before our Judge for what the world considers great and important: knowledge, positions, titles, offices, wealth, glory. These may even lead to our condemnation.
We are judged based on the practical application of our love — not as isolated individuals, but as members of human society. God did not create individuals autonomous and independent; He created us to become persons and a communion of persons. Even the greatest virtues, if they remain merely individual, are shares without value before the Great Judge, because they were not realized within human society — they were not validated as service.
Thus, for example, knowledge is a divine blessing — but only when it is sought for the sake of one’s neighbor, for service to others. The same applies to self-control, piety, fasting, and all our ascetic practice. If all these are done for personal justification and not as service to our brothers, to our neighbor, then the voice of God rebukes us:
“I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Matt. 9:13).
I desire love and not religiosity that aims at self-exaltation and self-display — that sees formality as the quintessence of piety.
3. The world has learned to buy everything — even consciences. But in the realm of faith this law does not apply. Personal piety cannot secure a place in the Kingdom of God unless it first becomes ecclesiastical — that is, accompanied by works of love. The arena of the Christian is society, not only the “inner chamber.” The Christian retreats to his chamber for spiritual supply, but his life is never exhausted within the narrow space of individuality.
If our spirituality is correct, it will lead to selfless love. Let us hear this once and for all: the argument of sentimental, irresponsible Christians — the “live unnoticed” mentality — has no power. “Take care of your soul” means nothing more than cowardice and retreat if it is not accompanied by the struggle:
“Fight to build your Christian society.”
Otherwise we are accidentally among Christians. Our place would be somewhere in the Far East — in the deadening of nirvana.
4. Yet I feel the need to anticipate an objection here. If we are judged by practical love, then where does faith stand? What importance has the struggle for faith and the purity of dogma? If it has no eternal dimensions, why engage in it?
At the hour of judgment faith — both as devotion and as teaching — is not excluded, as many first suppose. It is presupposed. Our Judge is Christ. We are saved or condemned by our stance toward Him. For He clarifies that every action toward our neighbor, good or bad, refers to His own person. Morally indifferent actions do not exist.
If He emphasizes love as the criterion, He does not exclude faith. Rather, He prevents our reduction of faith into a set of theoretical truths without response and application in life. Just as the declared atheist translates his unbelief into anti-divine deeds, so the believer must make faith the driving force of his life. Because “faith without works” (James 2:20) of love is dead.
He does not exclude faith — since it is the prerequisite of right life and salvation. And more: not only “he who does not believe” (in Christ) is not saved, but also he who does not believe rightly. God is not only love; He is also truth (John 14:6; 1 John 4:8, 4:16, 5:6) — indeed Truth itself. Whoever betrays truth betrays love. The love of Christ “rejoices in the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6); it coexists and flourishes with truth and does not exist without it.
Thus the struggle for dogmatic purity is justified: it is a struggle for love — the greatest ecclesiastical service. It is primarily social, because it is undertaken for the People of God, so that they remain unaffected by error, which is true spiritual suicide.
My brethren!
When Christ told us the Parable of the Judgment, His words could apply not only to His contemporaries but also to those who lived before Him. Those who did not know Christ may be judged only according to their love — although love without faith in God can never truly exist. Whoever sincerely practices love “receives” God, even if unaware of Him. The unbeliever can possess only an apparent love. Only where there is baptism and the Holy Spirit can there exist perfect love — Christian love.
But the issue must be posed differently: when we today hear the parable, two thousand years after the Incarnation of the Son of God, how can we separate love from (right) faith? The Gospel clearly says:
“He who does not believe is already judged, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).
After the Incarnation, judgment is the consequence of each person’s stance toward Christ. The criterion remains love — but love that presupposes faith in Christ. For this alone is true. This alone justifies and saves.
Source: From the book Light from Light: Homiletic Reflections on the Gospel Readings, Orthodox Kypseli Publications, Thessaloniki. Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
