Before fasting, we recall that the goal is to apply the commandments of God

After the Bible, he threw a sermon in which he said: “A person often wastes the goal of his life and replaces him with the means necessary to reach him, so the means become the goal. Like food, which is the means of a person to survive, so a person turns into a goal and strives to obtain and store it in order not to lose it, forgetting that God who cares about the flowers of the field and the birds of the sky does not abandon his children. Likewise, the money, which is an essential means of securing the needs, has become the goal of man, but rather his God, instead of God, and the source of his strength and authority, with it buys everything until the centers and consciences. This matter applies to our Christian life when we transform fasting and prayer and our theological knowledge as a goal for our lives, which are means to keep the mind of man and his body in the presence of God who calls us to go towards the needy relative, so we focus our view of ourselves, neglected the other, and we may offend or condemn it.

He added: “Our church is aware of the human condition, so it remembers it annually, before fasting, that the goal is to apply the commandments of God that is shortened by the love of God and the love of the relative. So today we read the gospel of judgment to remember that the Lord is present in the other, and that we will only reach the kingdom through our needy brothers. The Lord was evident in his words on the actions that a person must do to obtain the kingdom, and harsh in his ruling on those who succeed, because the fate of those who do not do the commandments of God is the eternal torment. Today we read a chapter from the first message of the Apostle Paul to the people of Corinthians, in which he speaks about the use of a person for his freedom in Christ, and his behavior regarding food. The Apostle talks about the behavior of some of the Corinthians church believers regarding idols. As for the believer, there is no god but God alone, and idols are not gods, but rather are made by humans. It was similar to restaurants alongside idolat structures, in which the meat of sacrifices was sold. The believer did not hesitate to go to those places to eat or buy meat, because he knew that there was no idolatry. However, this matter doubts the weak souls who might think that eating sacrifices is permitted, and therefore there is no objection to making sacrifices to idols. The Apostle says to us: “Thus, as you mistake the brothers and hurt their consciences, you are wrong to Christ.” The Christian does not offend the behavior towards others so that it does not offend Christ himself, and this is what we understand from the same judgment as well.

He said: “Love is the judge on the last day. The mercy that a person has shown towards every need of food, warmth and reassurance, and towards all outbreaks, shift and imprisoned, is the permissibility of crossing it to the kingdom. The Apostle Yaqoub says: “Just as the body is without a dead soul, so faith is without a dead deed” (2:26). If faith, fasting, and prayer are not coupled with love and mercy, all of these are empty and superficial. But the love was distorted in our days and became in their name bad actions, and people are persecuted or killed under the slogan of the fake good humanity, or waging wars and classifies humans according to color, race, layer and identity. This is far from the Christianity that sees the face of Christ in every human being who is sent to you in order to be a means of your salvation, and a blessing from God in order to love him, so he will open the door of the kingdom.

He concluded: “So we called us today to see God in every human being, whoever was, so that we can be trustees of the creation of the Lord that we train to reconcile with it during fasting, and its love for free, so we inherit the king prepared since the establishment of the world.”