Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Meat Fast
Leo the Great, Pope of Rome
Kellia and Sixth Hour: Joel 2:12-26 Reading at Vespers: Joel 3:12-21
Joel 2:12-26 LXX, especially vs. 13, "...rend your hearts, and
not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for He is merciful and compassionate, long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy, and repents of evils." During the years the Lord Jesus
ministered from Capernaum, He healed a paralytic after He said to him, "Son, be of good cheer;
your sins are forgiven you" (Mt. 9:2). St. Matthew tells us that "some of the scribes [who heard
Jesus' statement] said within themselves, This Man blasphemes!" (Mt. 9:3). Notice that the
Lord's critics merely thought "within themselves" that He was blaspheming. However, desiring
to heal men completely, the Lord said to these detractors, and also to us, "Why do you think evil
in your hearts?" (Mt. 9:4). Our evil thoughts, as well as our sinful acts, are repugnant to God.
The significance of evil thoughts is twofold: 1) the inward corruption they work within us, and,
of course, 2) and the resulting sins and the consequences that follow our wicked deeds.
Moreover, remember, among the various consequences that follow on our evil thoughts and
actions are the Divine judgments that befall us. In today's reading, through the Prophet Joel, the
Lord invites us to heartfelt repentance promising to "recompense [us] for the years which the
locust, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, and the cankerworm have eaten" (Joel 2:25).
We pay a heavy price for evil thoughts and passions. Like worms, they shrivel our hearts and
souls, a process St. Gregory of Nyssa describes well: "...Man, who once lived in the delights of
Paradise, has been transplanted into this unhealthy and wearisome place, where his life, once
accustomed to impassibility, became instead subject to passion and corruption...[For once any
innate passion] occupies the castle of the soul like a tyrant [it] afflicts the obedient lord through
his own subjects...For the whole array of passions, wrath and fear, cowardice and impudence,
depression as well as pleasure, hatred, strife and merciless cruelty, envy as well as flattery,
brutality together with brooding over injuries, they are all so many despotic masters...." These
masters are what Joel called adversary nations, who make us desolate and a reproach to the Name
we bear as Christians (vss. 19-20). The promised land of God's image within us is despoiled!
However, our loving Lord calls us to repent: "...turn to Me with all your heart, and with fasting,
and with weeping, and with lamentation: and rend your hearts, and not your garments..." (vss. 12,
13). Thus the Prophet holds up the icon of repentance to encourage us. Let the Priests sound the
trumpet, God's people gather, and even newly-weds set aside their nuptial joys. Let God's
People weep for their inward and outward sins before the Altar, crying to God, "Spare Thy
People, and give not Thine heritage to reproach" with godless powers ruling them (vss. 15-17).
Observe: God has declared that He will turn His "...face away from [our] sins and blot out all
[our] iniquities " (Ps. 50:9 LXX). He desires not the death of sinners but that we should repent
and live. Describing Himself as "merciful and compassionate, long-suffering, and plenteous in
mercy" (Joel 2:13), the Lord invites us to embrace the coming great Fast. "Be of good
courage...rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things" (vs. 21). Then, as Joel
promises, "God will rain on [us] the early and the latter rain" (vs. 23), as we sow change in the
fields of our hearts and souls (vs. 23). "He will recompense for the years" eaten away by the
consequences of our sins (vs. 25). As Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos says, "Repentance in
deep mourning and joined with confession is what unveils the eyes of the soul to see the great
things of God." Repentance is the promise in Great Lent, which, if we pursue it diligently, shall
enable us to "praise the Name of the Lord [our] God for the things...He has wrought" (vs. 26).
Grant, O Lord, that we may complete the remaining time of our life in repentance.
