2024 SUNDAY OF RECONCILIATION

During the past four weeks our Church prepared us to enter the Great Lent with the right spirit and disposition. Our goal is to arrive victorious and to share in the glorious Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

As the athletes are called to have the right disposition to train themselves for victory, the same way we train ourselves for the Great Victory, to be united with our Lord Jesus Christ. The Sundays before Great Lent presented us the right way to prepare: Zacchaeus personified the desire to see Christ; the Canaanite woman showed great faith; the publican, together with the prodigal son, had humility, repentance and return to God, our Father. And the last Sunday showed us the rewards of our compassionate support of our fellowman in his/her need.

In addition, Christ showed us the pitfalls which we need to avoid--the hypocrisy and judgmental spirit of the Pharisee and the self-righteousness of the older son, because these are catastrophic to our spiritual life. Furthermore, Christ told us that we will have to give an account to God of how we used our talents and resources, His gifts to us, towards our fellowman. Our Positive or negative response to the needs of our fellowman will be the criterion for our reward or punishment on the day of the last judgment. Christ also told us to offer our alms in secret, discretely and to pray to our Heavenly Father quietly, in our closet. Christ also gave us the Lord’s Prayer, as an example of how to pray to our Heavenly Father.

In this Sunday’s gospel lesson, Christ teaches us to clear our past and enter Great Lent with a clean slate. He asks us to forgive the others’ trespasses against us. In turn, our Heavenly Father will forgive our own trespasses, our sins. But if we refuse to forgive others, then our efforts will be in vain. That's why this Sunday is called “forgiveness Sunday.” At the end of the D. Liturgy, all the faithful are invited to offer and receive forgiveness from each other. We should also extend forgiveness to and ask forgiveness from people who are not in Church.

We are psychosomatic beings. Our fasting needs to be twofold--fasting from food and fasting from sin; fasting both material and spiritual. We are called to fast from high caloric foods - because they Inflame the flesh, the passions. Our body becomes unruly and does not want to cooperate with God’s spirit. But our body should be the instrument of the spirit to do good. Our fasting should help our spirit to control our five senses, our emotions, our desires, and thoughts, to abstain from evil. To achieve all this, we need the assistance of God. That’s the reason that we have more Services during the week to come to pray together: to prepare ourselves, through repentance and confession, to receive the Holy Sacraments. The Grace of God would give us strength and inspiration to live an authentic Christian life.

Kali Tessarakosti! A spiritually fruitful Great Lent!

With love,

Fr. John P. Angelis