Last Judgement

Sunday 18 February 1990

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The judgement of God is seen both as the last judgement and the dread judgement of Christ.

Last in the sense that there is a finality in it; those who will have stood before the judgement of God will be within the mercy, but they will be u n a b l e to do anything any more to save themselves. It will be too late to regret the past because there will be no way of repairing the past, there is no way of starting anew, because the way of (?) man will have come to an end of our earthly life, and we will stand into (?) total stability and the dread intensity of eternity; it will be too late.

And in that sense, the last judgement, the final, ultimate event is also a dread event: too late! Indeed, we will be in the mercy of God, indeed, we will depend on the mercy of those who have loved us, in whom we have kindled a spark of love (light (?), and who will turn to God and say, ‘He, or she have not lived in vain: s e e what spark his or her life have brought into my life! This person may not have been a beacon in life, not even a small candle – but this person has left something of You in life’.

But shall that be enough? It is not enough to be forgiven, it is not enough to be loved: we must be capable of accepting forgiveness and of receiving love. And we know from our earthly experience how often it happens, that loved – we do not love in response, forgiven – we reject the forgiveness, s t o n e we become instead of being living beings...

So, there is in today's thought of the Last judgement an element of finality, and an element of dread. And we must realise this, because this finality is not going to happen only thousands of years away from us when the whole of the world will stand before God, kingdoms and nations bringing to God their shame and their glory. It will happen to e a c h of us on the day of our death. We will stand before God knowing that this is the e n d – the end in the sense that we will be able to do nothing to correct the past and to start anew.

And yet, how simple in a way the Judgement is in the words of Christ! He does not speak to us of our creeds, He does not speak to us of the great things of which we dream at times, passing by the little we can do for the sake of the great things we do not do and shall never do; the question He is asking in the Gospel is this, from each of us: Have you been human or in-human? If we have been human, if there was compassion, and mercy – but an a c t i v e compassion, a creative mercy (?) than you can stand before God. If there was neither mercy, nor compassion, there is n o dimension within us to outgrow our createdness and our humanity in order to become the dwelling place of the Living God, to unite ourselves as a living member to the Body of Christ, i n Christ and by the power of the Spirit, in the words of Saint Ireaneus of Lyon to become t h e Only-Begotten Son of God.

And this will happen when our own, personal death will occur; and it will happen again, in a new way, unfathomable, unimaginable when all history will come to an end.

But it happens day in and day out, we must be aware of this! Day in and day out our conscience is judging us; day in and day out we pass judgement about ourselves: whether we have spoken the right words, thought the thoughts worthy of ourselves, and of God, and of those who love us, whether we have acted rightly, whether our will was directed to the good even if we have not succeeded to perfection! Day in and day out we stand before the judgement of our conscience – but how more convenient, how easy it is to dismiss is for later: Yes, later I shall put things right!.. And this is already now the judgement of God, and the moment comes, when having discarded the claims, the challenge of our conscience, we become more and more insensitive to those claims, more and more indifferent to the challenge until we can no longer respond, until to are deaf to the voice of God within us.

This is the b e g i n n i n g of the judgement, n o w, d a y i n, d a y o u t, at every hour of our life; then there will be a turning point of no return: our death. Then we will be able to count on nothing but on what have sown on earth: shall anyone stand before God and say, ‘He has not lived

in vain! He has left a mark in my life which is worthy of You, my Lord and my God!’.. Then there will be a last moment when the whole history will be wound up, and there will be no return...

Let us reflect on this; every day we can either enter into eternal life – or fall out of it. Let us live, grow into it, before it is not too late. Amen!