October 27, 2024 - Pastor Message
December 21, 2024THE LAST THINGS JUDGMENT
THE LAST THINGS
JUDGMENT
“When the Son of Man will come in his glory, and all his angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory, and all the nations will be gathered before him; and he will separate them from each other, just as a shepherd segregates the sheep from the goats, and indeed he will set the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those who are at his right: ‘Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a guest, and you welcomed me; naked, and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me; I was imprisoned, and you came to me.’ Then the just will respond to him: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a guest and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or imprisoned and come to you?’ And the King will respond to them: ‘Amen I say to you: As long as you did it for one of these least brothers of mine, you did it for me.’ Then he will say to those on his left: ‘Depart from me, accursed, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat; I was thirsty, and you did not give me a drink; I was a guest, and you did not welcome me; naked, and you did not clothe me; sick and imprisoned, and you did not visit me.’ Then they will respond saying to him: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a guest or naked or sick or imprisoned and not minister to you?’ Then he will respond to them saying: ‘Amen I say to you: As long as you did not do it for one of these least, you did not do it for me.’ And these will go into eternal punishment, but the just into eternal life” (Matthew 25:31-46).
Continuing our reflection on the Last Things, the Christian mystery of what happens after this life ends, we turn this week to the judgment we will all face, individually at the moment of our own death, and collectively at the end of all time. That we face two types of judgment after death is made known to us by both reason (People are dying and yet the world continues, so what happens to those who die before the world ends?) and faith, as revealed in Scripture, such as Jesus’s words to the repentant thief on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43); and the letter to the Hebrews: “Just as it was established for men to die once, but after this, judgment, so also Christ, sacrificed once to take away the sins of many, will appear a second time without sin to those expecting him in salvation” (Hebrews 9:27-28).
But what will these judgments be like? Setting aside the cartoonish images of judgment after death portrayed in film and TV, we have many different images in Scripture, like the judgment of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25 above or the images of judgment and sorting in the book of Revelation, with different intervals of time in between. All of this is poetic imagery conveying a great mystery in a variety of ways, which should not be read as a modern science or history book telling us exactly how our judgment will go.
At the heart of all of them, however, is the unmistakable reality that we will be judged after death by the truth: the truth of who Christ Jesus is; the truth of who we are; and the truth of who we have become through our choices in this life to love and serve God or not. We can deceive and be deceived by ourselves and others in this world clouded by sin, but death rips the curtain away and confronts us, face-to-face, with the awesome truth about ourselves in relationship with God in Jesus Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” except through whom no one can come to the Father (John 14:6). Jesus is the great mirror of truth into which we will gaze at the moment of our death (1 John 3), and, seeing ourselves in that mirror as we truly are, we ourselves will be our judge, rendering one of two verdicts: either we will rejoice in the radiant beauty of God’s image shining through us because we have made our choice to be with God in his kingdom for all eternity through the choices we made to love and serve him in this life; or we will despair in the utter darkness and emptiness staring back at us and flee from God’s light, unbearable to us because we have made our choice to reject God through the choices we made to love and serve sin in this life. This judgment is immediate at the moment of our death, and our soul, separated from our body, experiences the fulfillment of our choice for or against God immediately in either the eternal bliss of heaven or the eternal torment of hell. For those who choose heaven but still need further purification before experiencing the fruits of that choice, there is also the time of purgatory. We will reflect on all three of these in future columns.
That is the particular judgment each of us faces at the moment of our death, but what about the final judgment of all people and things at the end of time, when Jesus will return to his creation in glory and complete his victory over the Enemy, establishing a “new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21)? This judgment differs from our particular judgment in that, at our final judgment, our fate has already been sealed. Our immaterial soul will already be in heaven or hell, and our spiritual situation will not change. What will change is that we will be reunited with our body and take our place in God’s new creation in the final resurrection of life or of condemnation (John 5:25-29). Christ’s own bodily resurrection and ascension into glory assures us that the new world he is preparing for us is a material world, and we will live forever in that world in our own material bodies. That is the final judgment of this world, after which there will be no other as this world will have passed away and the new world will have begun. We will reflect next time on what that new world will be like in heaven. Until then, keep praying and working for that day so that we can pass our judgment and find out firsthand what heaven is like.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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