Настанет момент, когда мы предстанем пред Господом не добровольно, когда и верующие, и неверующие, и предстоявшие раньше, и не предстоявшие – все предстанем Ему. И это сделается не по нашей воле, а по воле Того, Кто соберет всех и поставит ошуюю и одесную Себя.

Тогда поздно уже будет стараться добровольно предстать перед Господом, тогда поздно будет класть грехи свои на главу перед Богом, тогда поздно будет познавать свою божественную природу и свой человеческий грех.

Пока мы еще в этой жизни, Святая Церковь через этот день, который предваряет Страшное Пришествие Господа, указывает нам, что мы находимся не в одинаковых условиях с теми, которые уже отошли от жизни и которым только наша молитва может помочь, мы можем сами добровольно предстоять Ему и в течение всей нашей жизни быть с Ним.

И тогда не страшен будет для нас этот Страшный, но справедливый суд.

И Святая Церковь призывает нас, не имеющих этого предстояния, хотя бы в этот день начать делание покаяния, положить на главу грехи свои и помнить, что придет день и предстанут все Престолу Господа Славы, и каждый получит должное ему.

Аминь.

Московские Епархиальные Ведомости № 1-2/2002

 "OPEN UNTO ME THE DOORS OF REPENTANCE, O GIVER OF LIFE..."

Homily on Saturday of the First Week of Great Lent, evening

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

We, brethren, after the first week of Great Lent, which should be spent in sincere repentance, have come to the celebration of Orthodoxy, which reveals to us a way out of our sinful state and indicates the path that a person who has begun repentance should follow. If you have brought repentance, then by doing so you have only begun to enter into real life. After all, the covenant of God with man was laid down twice - in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament it was laid down through Moses on Mount Sinai, in the New Testament through His Son: "For this is My Lord, of the New Testament, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26:28).

The Lord both now (in the new) and in the ancient (old) revealed His covenant. But in order for us to be in His covenant, we must enter into a covenant with God ourselves. When the priest in the Sacrament of Confession absolves the penitent of sin, he asks in prayer to give him an image of repentance: "Thou Thyself even now have compassion on Thy servant and give him the image of repentance."

We ourselves are created in the image of God and in the likeness. We ask for the image of repentance, the image of correction: this is the image in which we must live. Repentance is our covenant with God to correct our lives. And if we have not entered into our covenant, the covenant of man with God, then for us the covenant of God with man is also invalid.

In the Old Testament, God gave His covenant through Moses. And the Lord said to Moses: "Go up to Me into the mountain and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and the commandments, which I wrote for the teaching of Israel" (Exodus 24:12). "And Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of the Lord overshadowed Mount Sinai... Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and went up into the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights" (Exodus 24:15,18). "When the people saw that Moses had not come down from the mountain for a long time, they gathered together to Aaron and said to him, Arise and make us a god to go before us: for with this man, with Moses, who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened" (Exodus 32:1). Aaron commanded them to bring gold. "And all the people took the gold earrings out of their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he took them out of their hands, and made of them a cast calf, and made it with a chisel. And they said, Behold thy god, O Israel, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:3-4).