On February 23, 2020, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine said in his sermon on the Last Judgment that only sacrificial good, when we do not expect anything in return, is real, reported the Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Primate of the UOC noted that the Holy Church does not accidentally recall the Last Judgment (Matthew 25: 31-46), “when all people will be rewarded for good deeds,” before the Great Lent. Because by fasting and praying, according to the hierarch, “a person is filled with the good grace of the Holy Spirit and grows to be able to do good.”
“In life, all people live differently: one is trying to do good, forgive, love, while the other is messing around, doing what he wants. But the end will be the same for everyone – it will come during the Second Advent of Christ, during the Last Judgment,” said His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry.
His Beatitude reminded that at the Last Judgment, the Lord will not ask whether we prayed and fasted, He will ask if we did good deeds.
“The point is that a person cannot do sacrificial good unless he prepares himself,” said the metropolitan. “Through fasting and praying, a person makes himself ‘good’, i.e. he fills his soul with the good grace of the Good God. Therefore, if a person does this, then he becomes capable of doing sacrificial good; in addition, by doing good he does not expect anything in return.”
As the Primate of the UOC emphasized, by fasting and praying we must purify ourselves from the sin and evil deeds – “in this way we will make ourselves capable of doing sacrificial good.”
“May the Lord help us, dear brothers and sisters, so that during the Holy Lent, to the best of our ability, we would work, pray, fast and make ourselves good, so that we can do good to our neighbors and be able to hear the Lord’s voice: ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world’ (Matthew 25: 34),” His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry noted.
As reported by the Union of Orthodox Journalists, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry explained earlier that understanding the feat and heritage of the new martyrs and confessors of the twentieth century allows us to once again make certain that the forces of evil cannot prevail over the Church.
