{"id":554,"date":"2020-02-15T07:18:51","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T07:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"\/en\/?p=554"},"modified":"2021-02-19T08:57:08","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T08:57:08","slug":"meeting-of-the-lord-encounter-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/homilies\/meeting-of-the-lord-encounter-love\/","title":{"rendered":"MEETING of the Lord. Encounter Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For three\nSundays we have been preparing for Lent of repentance, considering its biblical\nexamples at the Liturgy. However, neither the story of Zacchaeus, who\ndistributed half the estate to the poor (LK. 19: 1-10), nor the story of\nanother publican who initiated the Jesus prayer (LK. 18:10-14) are as\nimpressive as today&#8217;s parable of the prodigal son (LK. 15:11-32). This one\ncontains the whole history of our salvation, from the fall of Adam to eternal\njoy in the Father&#8217;s house. It is sad that the way to God for many passes\nthrough the country of swines, and only troubles make us remember that we have\na Helper and a Protector. But it is even more terrible that formal\nrighteousness kills love, and, because of envy, itself refuses the feast of\neternal life, leading to spiritual suicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reason\nis that the formalist, alike Pharisee, while fulfilling the commandments, wants\njustice from God in return. But&#8230; he doesn&#8217;t need God himself! While God\nwishes love from us. Because He is a Person, not a soulless karma. And what is\nlove? Here it is: &#8220;I want not your possessions but you&#8221;(2 Cor.12:14).\nLove forgives everything, covers everything, and pays for everything; you\nshould not expect &#8220;justice&#8221; from love. The father&#8217;s love for the\nunlucky son cost him a large part of his estate and tears, while the Heavenly\nFather paid for his love for us with the blood of His Son. Since He did not\ncondemn either the prodigal or the publican, we can only imitate them in\nrepentance and forgive everyone, remembering: &#8220;All that you have done to\npeople, you have done to Me&#8221; (see Mt.25: 40, the Sunday of the Last\nJudgment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"700\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/86802873_2747280355308275_7160161763235725312_o.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-555\" srcset=\"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/86802873_2747280355308275_7160161763235725312_o.jpg 960w, https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/86802873_2747280355308275_7160161763235725312_o-300x219.jpg 300w, https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/86802873_2747280355308275_7160161763235725312_o-768x560.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For three Sundays we have been preparing for Lent of repentance, considering its biblical examples at the Liturgy. However, neither the story of Zacchaeus, who distributed half the estate to the poor (LK. 19: 1-10), nor the story of another publican who initiated the Jesus prayer (LK. 18:10-14) are as impressive as today&#8217;s parable of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":555,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"podcat":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homilies"],"acf":[],"views":5226,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554"},{"taxonomy":"podcat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phvieparchy.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/podcat?post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}