Below are three of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the Sunday of the Last Judgment, the feast of the Lord's Encounter with Simeon, and the First Sunday of Lent, 2008.

We're just about a week away from the beginning of Great Lent, and the Church continues to help us prepare through the Sunday Gospels. Today's Gospel (Mt. 25:31-46) is the bottom line of the whole of our lives. If no other instructions, encouragements, or admonitions have worked up until now, the Church clearly places before us the reality of our accountability in this life, for there will be a divine judgment, after which our destiny is eternally sealed. We can spend our whole lives deceiving others and deceiving ourselves, or being lazy or mediocre or selfish or just plain hard-hearted and mean, and perhaps we can even try to cover all this with a thin veil of piety, so that people think we are righteous. But on Judgment Day all masks will be removed, all veils lifted, and the whole truth and nothing but the truth will be known to all. This Gospel is meant to be a wake-up call. God is not mocked, says the Apostle, we reap what we sow—and this truth is clearly expressed in the mystery of the final judgment.

The services for this feast are quite intentionally terrifying, full of images of raging and unquenchable fire, of the undying and tormenting worm, of the outer darkness and all the torments of the damned—along with the exposure of our evil deeds and the endless lamentations of those who did not repent and do the will of God in this life.

This has been the common approach for centuries in both East and West, and only in the past few decades in the West has the pendulum swung—to the opposite extreme. Nowadays, God has become "non-judgmental," so there doesn't need to be a Judgment Day anymore. We have redefined sin, ostensibly with God's permission, so most of the things that used to be considered offensive to God are now just morally neutral elements of the learning process. With a wink and a nudge, God lets us know that our sins are no big deal, and that in the end He'll be passing out awards to all indiscriminately. Just seek your own happiness, follow your feelings, be good to yourself, and all shall be well. Very comforting, very non-threatening, this, but I'm afraid it's a huge load of baloney.

Now it may be said, and for the most part rightly so, that we ought not try to scare people into Heaven by warning them of the just punishments due to sinners. (Though frankly, if nothing else were to work, I'd rather be scared into Heaven than lulled into Hell.) We'll look at the positive side of things in a moment, but let's first look at the salutary possibilities of a bit of well-placed fear. We heard an interesting reading from St Augustine the other night. He was writing about the terrifying manifestations that Scripture says will accompany the Second Coming of Christ. He says that when something is terrifying, it's actually OK to be terrified! Now what does he mean by this? He says that if we are terrified we will be vigilant, and if we are vigilant we will be secure. If we think that Judgment Day is going to be a stroll in the park, then we will make no effort to prepare for it. If we think there are no eternal consequences for our sins, we will heedlessly go on committing them, not taking repentance too seriously. If God is a benign, non-judgmental old Grandpa, then we can pull the wool over his eyes and sneak into Heaven—or, better yet, since we have taken it upon ourselves to ignore Scripture and create a god according to our own fancy, we can dispense altogether with the scary talk of judgment and Hell and devils and punishments. We try to "tame" God by reducing Him to size that we can control or be comfortable with. But since God is a God of truth, He will have to resist our efforts, for our own good. God is who He is, and it's no use trying to give Him a 21^st-century American makeover.

In addition to the Bible and the teachings of the Church, we have the testimony of the saints. I've just started reading the writings of St Padre Pio, arguably one of the greatest saints of the 20^th century, and certainly one of the most gifted and intimate with God. I can't go into much detail here, but suffice it to say that even though his heart was on fire with love of God, and he knew well the Divine Mercy, he was under no illusion that all would automatically be saved or even that God is harmless and soft and easy with us. He loved God because God is God—and God's will, manifested in the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ, was all that mattered to him. He wrote, concerning an affliction that God sent to him: "I silently adore and kiss the hand of the One who strikes me." So we accept in faith the word and will of God, whether or not it seems pleasant to us.

Even a great saint such as Padre Pio, who received the stigmata and had many heavenly visions and mystical experiences, did not presume his own salvation, but he knew it must be worked out day by day. He wrote: "The thought that at any moment I may lose Jesus distresses me in a way that I cannot explain; only a soul that loves Jesus sincerely can understand what this means." So it would be quite arrogant for any of us lesser Christians to assume that we're just going to coast into Heaven without the harrowing experience of the Cross and of the painful purification of our souls. To love God is not to create a sentimental and harmless image of Him so that we can artificially calm our fears; to love Him is to keep his commandments, as Jesus repeatedly said. We won't know for certain our eternal destiny until we hear it from the mouth of the Lord at our own judgment. A Jesuit from a former time once wrote: "Our life will not be a success until we are actually in Heaven; and it won't be a failure until we are actually in Hell."

Now, after recognizing the value of a healthy fear of God and a sober acceptance of the accountability of our lives—which we must recognize unless we are to ignore large portions of divine revelation—we can look at the criteria that Jesus uses for judging us at the Last Day. It boils down to love, expressed in concrete, practical ways. We might be correct if we assume that our judgment will include more elements than what Jesus explicitly mentions in this Gospel, but that can only be speculation. It's always best to stick to what Jesus has actually said, what God has actually revealed through Him. So Jesus says that if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven we have to treat others as if they were Jesus, for He has chosen to identify with them. To feed the hungry and clothe the naked and visit the sick, and provide in whatever way for those who are in need, is to minister to Jesus Himself, and this, according to Him, will gain for us entry into Heaven.

This is one of the points on which Christians fail most often. Those words of Jesus—"You did it to Me"—should be burned into our consciousness. "You did it to Me": if we helped someone or if we hurt someone, we did it to Jesus. If we attended to someone or ignored someone, we did it to Jesus. If we honored someone or despised someone, we did it to Jesus. If we loved someone or if we hated someone, we did it to Jesus. All of this will be made manifest on Judgment Day.

We ought also to remember that fear of God and love of God are two sides of the same coin, as are God's justice and his mercy. Only one who loves Him deeply can fear Him rightly. We dread the smallest offense against Him, for He is holy and loves us immeasurably. We shouldn't fear being punished for our sins. We should expect that, because we deserve it. We should fear only to grieve God by our sins. Thus our fear is a form of love. We can't divide up into camps and say well, the fear approach is pre-Vatican II (though let's remember that the entire history of the Church, except the last 40 years, is pre-Vatican II), and that the loving mercy approach is post-Vatican II. Any approach that doesn't take both into account is a false one. Just because God loves us doesn't mean He won't punish us for our sins; and just because He punishes us for our sins doesn't mean He doesn't love us. His punishments—in this life, anyway—are therapeutic and didactic. They are meant for our healing and instruction. If the Gospel of the Last Judgment inspires fear in us, let us transform fear into vigilance unto spiritual profit. But let us also recognize that the fear of the Lord, properly understood, is not merely an immature stage in the spiritual life. In fact, St Paul tells us to "make holiness perfect in the fear of God" (2Cor. 7:1). Can't go much further than perfect holiness! St John does say that perfect love casts out fear, but he can only mean the servile fear that is not a virtue. The "fear of the Lord" is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and love does not cast out gifts of the Holy Spirit!

As we prepare to enter into an intimate and loving communion with Christ through the Holy Eucharist, let us remember how we are invited: "Approach with the fear of God and with faith." No one is asked to approach with warm fuzzies and with faith. Let us approach the Lord as He is: both Judge and Savior, all-just and all-merciful, offended by sin but willing to forgive, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, who dwells in inaccessible light and also in our poor hearts, and who is coming to judge the living and the dead.

It's always better to stick to reality. Life might be easier if we weren't accountable for our actions. But just face it, we are, so let's live accordingly and strive mightily toward the Kingdom. The Gospel is a sobering tonic, full of grace and truth. So let us drink to our spiritual health and salvation!

The Gospel for this feast (Lk 2:22-40) clearly sets it in the context of the Old Testament yet opens the door for its fulfillment in the New. It begins by speaking of "purification according to the law of Moses." This is a rite that every woman had to undergo after childbirth. The flow of blood causes one to become ritually unclean, and so a rite of purification was required. It is perhaps ironic that the all-pure Virgin would be considered ritually unclean after having given birth to the Son of God, but evidently the Father wanted Mary and Joseph to live devoutly as disciples of Moses until such time and the New Covenant would be revealed.

Included with the ritual of purification (this feast has sometimes been called the "Purification of Mary") is the presentation of the 40-day old first-born son to God. Again there's a bit of irony in the quotation from the law by St Luke that every first-born male shall be called holy to the Lord, that is, shall be set apart for God. The Son of God was essentially holy for all eternity, but here He has to undergo a primitive rite proclaiming Him so. Mary and Joseph had no idea that they were ever to be anything but faithful Jews, even though they realized that the Messiah had been miraculously conceived and born of Mary. He was, after all, the Messiah of the Jews, the One they had all been expecting. But they weren't all necessarily expecting the Savior of the world, for it says that Simeon was looking for "the consolation of Israel" and Anna was awaiting the "redemption of Jerusalem."

Let us take a look now at Simeon. He plays a central role in this Gospel, and in the Byzantine tradition the name of this feast is not the presentation of the Lord but the encounter or meeting with Simeon. First of all, the text says that he was a righteous and devout man. Some liturgical texts imply that he was the priest who performed the rites of purification and presentation, but the Scriptures give no indication that such was the case. He was rather a layman, and he wasn't in the temple at that time because of some priestly duty, but because the Holy Spirit inspired him to go into the temple at that particular moment. We see here, I think, a sort of contrast between the priest Zachariah and the layman Simeon, the former representing the priestly institution of the chosen people, and the latter the charismatic life of those who would walk by the Spirit.

The institution of the Jewish priesthood would soon come to an end, but the age of the Holy Spirit was just beginning. Zachariah doubted the message of the angel, but Simeon obediently followed the inspiration of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit had told Simeon that he would not die before he would see the promised Messiah. He did not say, as did Zachariah, "How can I know this? For I am old…" He just went where the Spirit led him, without questioning.

This brings us to the issue of Simeon's age. Most people assume that he was a really old man, that he was waiting a long time for the coming of the Messiah. This may well be true, though the Scripture gives us no indication of his age. One legend has it that Simeon was among the Seventy who translated the Old Testament into Greek, but that would have made him about 300 years old at the time of his meeting with Christ! So let us just say, since he is also linked in the Gospel with the prophetess Anna, who was 84 years old, that he too was old and was waiting for a long time. In this he can be a kind of symbol of all Israel, which had been waiting and praying a long time for the coming of the Messiah.

Even though I made a contrast with the priest Zachariah and the charismatic layman Simeon, the Gospel tells us that both of them prophesied through the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit belongs to both the Old and New Testaments (though He is revealed as the Third Person of the Holy Trinity only in the New), for, as we say in the Creed, He has spoken through the prophets. But in both the prophecy of Zachariah and that of Simeon, the direction is toward the New Testament, the manifestation of the Christ.

Zachariah prophesied the Forerunner, who would be unique among prophets for not only foretelling Christ but actually pointing Him out, saying, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" Simeon's prophecy is a kind of sneak preview of the same thing, though his prophecy was a prayer as well as a private message for Mary.

He first "blessed God" (just as did Zachariah when his tongue was loosed), and asked the Lord to let him go in peace. For the Lord's word had come to pass; he had seen the Messiah, whom he spoke of in terms of salvation, glory, and a light of revelation. Mary and Joseph marveled when they heard this—not that they didn't know already that their Child was to be the Messiah, but because so many other people knew, people that they themselves did not know. The shepherds had come to them saying that angels had sent them to find the Savior; the magi would come at God's invitation to find the newborn King; Simeon and Anna were told by the Holy Spirit that the Child was the Messiah. Mary and Joseph probably began to realize that they were placed at the center of a divine event that was both profound in its mystery and universal in its extension.

Yet there was more. This mystery would not be one that would bring only joy and gladness and awestruck marveling—even though it was intended to do just that. In a fallen world, the announcement of the light of truth would provoke opposition from many, for as St John would say, those who like to hide their sins under cover of darkness do not wish to come near the Light. So Simeon said that Child is going to be for the fall as well as the rise of many in Israel, a sign of contradiction—a sign which, by its very presence, would reveal what is in people's hearts, for good or for bad. In all this, Simeon told Mary that she would not be indifferent to or separate from the fate of her Son, for a sword would pierce her own soul as well.

This sword would most keenly be felt as she stood by the Cross, the culmination of the opposition to Christ by people blinded to truth and hardened against love. But this very moment of sorrow and pain would be the herald of the liberation of mankind and the possibility of our return to Paradise. One of our liturgical texts poetically puts it this way: "A sword pierced your heart, all-holy one, when you saw your Son in his Passion, pierced by a lance in order to turn away the sword that closed the gates of Paradise." The spiritual sword in Mary's soul is a kind of reflection of the pierced side of Christ. The lance plunging into his heart indicated the withdrawal of the flaming sword from the gates of Paradise.

Finally, Anna comes on the scene, speaking of the Child to anyone who would listen, anyone who was also waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. She had been a widow for most of her long life, and she spent her days in the temple, "worshiping with fasting and prayer." She was waiting, waiting for the Lord to extend his mercy to her people and send the promised Messiah. There were others among the devout who were also waiting, and who must have been overjoyed at the testimony of Simeon and Anna. I'm sure it was providential, however, that the Holy Family lived far away in Nazareth and not in Jerusalem. They would have been assailed constantly with people checking on the welfare and progress of the growing young Messiah. As it was, probably nobody in Nazareth knew of all the extraordinary events concerning the Child, so He could grow up in relative obscurity and peace.

As we're about to begin the season of Great Lent, we are waiting too, along with Simeon and Anna. In the short term we may simply be waiting for Easter to come around again, and in the meantime we too will be in the temple worshiping with fasting and prayer. But we're also waiting for something greater, something more profound and universal. We're waiting for the Messiah to come again, not in hidden obscurity but in manifest glory. We want our eyes to see our Salvation, the Light of Revelation and the Glory of Israel, the Lord and Savior of the whole world. Our liturgical celebrations ought to do more than help us look back at the mysteries of salvation history, and even more than to make their grace present today. They have to help orient us to the ultimate fulfillment of all the mysteries of our salvation, to everything that will be revealed and established when death, the last enemy, is conquered, when the heavenly Jerusalem descends, and when God will at length be manifestly All in all.

So let us worship with prayer and fasting, let us pray for the consolation of the people of God, and let us bless God as Simeon did. Let us also realize that we have thrown in our lot with the Sign of Contradiction, and that a sword may pierce our own souls before all is said and done. The Cross is the only way to Paradise. Let it be a Light of revelation as we await the coming of the Glory.

It seems to me that the first Sunday of Lent is all about seeing. Part of what we are celebrating today is the restoration of the veneration of the holy icons, solemnly declared at the seventh ecumenical council at Nicea. (There's nothing especially Lenten about this, but it originally occurred at this time of the year, so it is celebrated now.) Against the iconoclasts, who claimed that, according to Old Testament prohibitions, images of God were forbidden, the council fathers reiterated the tradition which comes from the central mystery of the New Testament: that the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, is the "image of the invisible God." He could be seen and touched, as St John tells us in the beginning of his First Epistle. If He could be seen and touched, then He could rightly be depicted and venerated in the holy icons. The prohibition against making images of God was in force only until the invisible God became visible in Christ. We are celebrating the fact that with the advent of Jesus Christ, the great and ancient longing of man to see God was fulfilled, and we have testimony of it in the icons.

So in the Epistle for this Sunday, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews exhorts us to "keep our eyes fixed on Jesus" (12:2). This is for the sake of running with perseverance the race that is set before us. This "race" is really the whole of our earthly lives, but at this moment of the liturgical year, we can assume that the Church intends us to consider this time of Lent as the present race which we have to run, the liturgical "finish line" being the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. If the eyes of our hearts are not fixed on Jesus, we will not be able to produce the required spiritual fruit this Lent, for, as He said, without Him we can do nothing. The holy icons help us focus our prayer and our attention on Him who is the image of the invisible God, and who calls us to take up our crosses and follow Him through the desert of Great Lent.

Let us now look at the Gospel (Jn 1:43-51) and see what we can see. It's all about the first disciples' meeting with Jesus for the first time. This Gospel starts with Philip and Nathanael, but I'd like to back up a few verses and look at the call of Andrew and Peter as well, for the accounts are quite similar and share the same themes.

It all begins with seeing. John the Baptizer "looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God!'" (v. 35). "Behold," that is, look at Him; see the One who is being manifested to you. John had said the day before: "For this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel… I have seen and I have borne witness that this is the Son of God." So he is saying: "I have seen; now you must see." The two disciples who were with John then went and followed Jesus. When they asked Him where He was staying, He said, "Come and see." It is not enough just to acquire the information. They weren't merely interested in his address, anyway. To ask "where are you staying?" is a way of asking, "may we come to the place you are staying?" Jesus knew that, so He didn't just tell them where he was staying. He invited them to come and to see. They were beholding the image of the invisible God, yet they did not yet realize that. But He made such a powerful impression on them that they immediately became his disciples.

Thus began John the Baptizer's decreasing and Jesus' increasing. These two men were John's disciples the day before. After an overnight stay with Jesus they were suddenly Jesus' disciples. John had testified to Jesus and his disciples left him and joined Jesus. Now these disciples began to testify to Jesus. Andrew went to his brother Simon and said, "We have found the Messiah," and brought him to Jesus. Now it is Jesus' turn to see. The Gospel says, "Jesus looked at him." So there is a mutual seeing involved in becoming a disciple of Christ. We are called to behold the Lamb of God, and when we do, He in turn looks at us and draws us into communion with Himself. The first thing He did to Peter after looking at him was to give Him a new name. This is symbolic not only of Peter's future mission (to be the "rock" of Christ's Church), but also of the personal transformation, the newness of life that is communicated to those who enter into a personal relationship with Jesus. Christ says in the Book of Revelation that He will give a new name to those who are victorious over evil with the help of his grace (2:17). This is a very personal and intimate name, "which no one knows except him who receives it."

Jesus called Philip to follow Him, and then, as with the other disciples, Philip began to testify about Jesus to others. He told Nathanael that he had found the promised Messiah. When Nathanael expressed doubts about this, Philip could only invite him, saying, "Come and see." He knew he wouldn't get very far with mere descriptions or explanations, but if only Nathanael could see for himself, no explanations would be necessary.

As with Peter, Jesus took the initiative with Nathanael. Jesus saw him coming toward Him and immediately opened the reluctant disciple's heart by revealing that He already knew him: "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." What can this mean? We'll never know for sure, but we can probably guess that something profound had happened to Nathanael under the fig tree. It had great meaning for him; perhaps he had had some sort of experience of God. But if Jesus knew about that, and even saw it, then Nathanael had to conclude that Jesus shared somehow in the omniscience and omnipresence of God. He spontaneously exclaimed: "You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

But Jesus wasn't done with Him yet. Whatever had happened under the fig tree was only the beginning, for Jesus then said: "You shall see greater things." And he gave him an example: "You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." This is a striking bit of self-revelation. It refers to Jacob's vision between Beer-sheba and Haran. Jacob saw a ladder connecting earth to heaven. God was at the top of it, and angels were ascending and descending upon it. God revealed Himself as the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, and promised to give him and his descendants that very land on which he was lying.

Now Jesus told Nathanael that angels would ascend and descend upon Him, the Son of Man. So this means that Jesus Himself is the ladder, the bridge connecting heaven and earth, connecting God and man through his incarnation. The image of the invisible God, in becoming man, had become visible, and now men were invited to come and see! The image of Jacob's ladder would have been known to those first disciples, but it would be some time before they grasped its full import. Yet in beholding the Lamb of God and deciding to follow Him, they proved that they were the most clear-sighted of men. And little by little they continued extending the call to come and see, to come and know, experience, and enter into communion with Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man.

The call still goes out today. The common prokimenon (psalm verse that precedes a reading in the Offices) for the apostles is: "Their message goes out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the universe." The apostolic message still goes out through the Church, through today's disciples of Christ. We can't literally see Him in the flesh and go to stay at his house, but we do have his sacred images, through which we can enter his presence through prayer and contemplation. We can still come to his house, his place where He dwells in a special way. We can still experience Him as One who can be seen and touched through communion in the Holy Eucharist.

So let us, as we're about to begin the second week of Lent, keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and strengthened by his grace let us persevere in running the race, the full course of the Great Fast. For this purpose, says the author of Hebrews, we have to lay aside the encumbrance, the dead weight of sin, or we will never make it to the finish line. Let us celebrate and give thanks for the inexpressible gift of the incarnation of the eternal Image of the invisible God, for if He had not become man we would have no hope for salvation. Let us allow Jesus to look at us as well, and through that mutual gaze let us grow deeper in love and commitment to Him.

Perhaps we might say that we have thus far seen little of his glory and majesty in our own experience. But Jesus looks at us and says, as He did to Nathanael: "You will see greater things." Let us, then, persevere in following Jesus, so that the eyes of our hearts will be fully enlightened. Thus we will spontaneously exclaim to Jesus—not as an item of theology or even an article of faith, but as a personal and powerful experience of awestruck wonder—"You are the Son of God!"

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