The Sunday of Meatfare, the third Sunday of the Triodion, places at the center of liturgical life the Gospel passage Matthew 25:31–46, often referred to as a “parable” or an icon of the Last Judgment. Christ is presented as King and Judge, before whom “all the nations” are gathered. The separation into “sheep” and “goats” is not based on external titles, social status, or religious appearance, but on a concrete way of life revealed through works of love offered to “the least.”
This passage does not function as a simple moral exhortation, but as a theological revelation: it discloses who Christ is, where He stands within history, and how human existence is judged. The criterion of Judgment is one’s relationship with Christ, and this relationship becomes visible through one’s relationship with the suffering person.
The decisive point of the passage is Christ’s identification with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the imprisoned: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me” (Matt. 25:40). Here we do not have a mere exaggeration meant to stir emotion, but an expression of the Incarnation: God assumes human nature and remains “present” within the human wound. For this reason, love is not an optional addition to faith; it is the way faith becomes flesh and history.
From an ecclesiological perspective, the passage shows that the Church’s life is not exhausted in worship understood as ritual, but is brought to completion as a eucharistic ethos: doxology that is transformed into service. The community of salvation is called to see the human person not as a “case,” but as a brother or sister—someone who concerns us at an existential level.
“Judgment” in this passage is not presented first as a legal procedure, but as a revelation. A person is shown to be what he or she has chosen to become: open to relationship or closed in self-sufficiency. That is why it is striking that both groups ask the same question: “When did we see You?” (Matt. 25:37–39, 44). Love, when it is genuine, does not advertise itself nor count itself as an achievement. Conversely, indifference is often not experienced as hatred, but as “neutrality”—which, in the light of Christ, proves to be a refusal of communion.
Thus, faith and works are not set against each other. Faith is alive only when it acts as love, while works without a spirit of repentance become self-justification. Salvation does not appear as a reward for “correct deeds,” but as entry into a relationship already cultivated here and now: into the Kingdom of Christ.
The Sunday of Meatfare is placed pedagogically before the beginning of the stricter fast. It reminds us that ascetic practice is not an end in itself, nor a kind of spiritual athleticism that culminates in pride. Abstinence from foods gains meaning when it becomes an opening of the heart, freedom from self-centeredness, and practical care for the other. The hymnography of the Triodion maintains this tone: repentance as a return to life, not as moral anxiety.
Within this framework, the passage functions as a mirror: it calls us to examine not only what we “observe,” but whom we love, whom we ignore, and whom we leave without help. The Great Lent that follows proposes the classic means (prayer, fasting, almsgiving) not as isolated actions, but as a single path of healing that restores communion with God and with our fellow human being.
Matthew 25:31–46 remains timely because it reveals that Christ is encountered where the human person suffers: in poverty, loneliness, displacement and refuge, illness, and social exclusion. The Church is not asked to choose between “spirituality” and service; it is called to live spirituality as service. The Sunday of Meatfare, within the Triodion, shows that the expectation of the Resurrection is not an escape from the world, but the transfiguration of life: love that conquers death even now, because it already communes with the Living Christ.
+ Metropolitan Nektarios of Hong Kong and South East Asia
