Weekly Message February 13, 2026

Beloved brothers and sisters,

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been returning again and again to Christ’s clearest command: love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. No footnotes. No fine print.

This Sunday’s Gospel takes that command and removes every remaining excuse.

In Matthew 25, Christ does not ask what we believed, how loudly we defended truth, or how well we explained ourselves. He asks one question: Did you love?

Did you feed the hungry?

Did you welcome the stranger?

Did you clothe, visit, show mercy?

And then comes the line that should unsettle all of us: “As you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to Me.”

Notice what’s missing. There are no caveats. No qualifiers. No exceptions based on worthiness, agreement, or comfort. Christ identifies Himself not with the powerful, the righteous, or the victorious, but with the vulnerable.

This is the continuation of everything we’ve been talking about. Loving your neighbor is not a sentiment. It is not an idea. It is not something we outsource to institutions or reduce to opinions. It is concrete, costly, and personal.

As we stand on the threshold of Lent, the Church places this Gospel in front of us deliberately. Before we fast, before we kneel, before we take inventory of our sins, Christ asks us to look outward and answer honestly: Who have I loved? Who have I ignored? Who have I decided does not count as my neighbor?

The judgment in Matthew 25 is not about cruelty. It is about indifference. Not about hatred, but about distance.

Christ calls us again, as He always does, not to be louder or harsher, but to be more faithful. To love without exceptions. To see His face in the one standing in front of us.

Because in the end, that is the measure He uses.

With love in Christ,

Fr. Evagoras