His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel: „The unique criterion of the Right Judge is the merciful Love”

On 27 February 2011, the Orthodox Church celebrated the 3rd Sunday of the period of the Triode, also called the Sunday of the Frightening Judgement or of the beginning of meat fasting. The evangelical pericope of Matthew 25:31-46 presenting the final Judgement was read in the church at this feast. The only criterion by which God will divide the people at the Last Judgement is the merciful love, said His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel today, in the chapel of the Patriarchal Residence, “Saint Gregory the Enlightener”, in the end of the Divine Liturgy.

His Beatitude has also explained in the sermon delivered that at the Last Judgement the humans will be also judged for their lack of humaneness.

“Jesus Christ, our Saviour, judges inhumanity, namely the human unwillingness to help his fellow being, the man’s unwillingness to help the one who suffers. Saint John Chysostom calls the indifference to someone else’s sufferance “inhumanity”. The people who remain indifferent to someone else’s sufferance are resembled to the demons and this is why they will go to hell, because of their spiritual indifference, for their neglect and indifference to the sufferance of those around who are hungry, thirsty, with nothing to wear, poor, sick or imprisoned. While reading this Gospel we see that the unique criterion of the Right Judge is the merciful love, which resembles the humans to the merciful God”, said the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, as Trinitas Radio station informs us.

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