The Last Judgment, after Maarten de Vos c.1580, The British Museum, London, UK.

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He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’.    Matthew 25:33-34.

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Last Sunday, the feast of Christ the King, 

“Death comes for us all. Yes even for Kings he comes, to whom amidst all their Royalty and brute strength he will neither kneel not make them any reverence nor pleasantly desire them to come forth, but roughly grasp them by the very breast and rattle them until they be stark dead!” Thus says Sir Thomas More as he is condemned to death for treason for not accepting King Henry VIII as head of the church in England instead of the Pope, as related in Robert Bolt’s play Man for All Seasons. And now we approach the end – death if you like – of the church’s year. Today’s readings place us all surely within that time when each of us will be called to make account of our lives before God, to state how well we grasped not death, but the gifts with which we were born, given us by God, and what we have made of them. Did we use them as God intended, or for our own glory? Did others benefit, or just us? Was our sight fixed on our own glory, or on our neighbor’s? There will be no avoiding it; we will all face it at some point. And at that moment there will be nothing we can do to change anything. Our history will be what it is, laid out before the ultimate judge. Then there will be the separating of the sheep from the goats, as described in today’s gospel (and graphically shown above). I am not a believer in  devils and pitchforks and the flames you can see in that graphic; it just all seems silly, cartoonish. But what I can imagine is something much more terrifying. If we have lived a life glorifying ourselves, enriching only ourselves with the gifts given us, then we have made a life with ourselves as god, not God. Logically, then, eternity awaits us – alone – forever, in infinite darkness, fully self-conscious, with only ourselves to blame. We are our own tinpot god, forged by us, without any hope of any change ever, ever, ever. That is terrifying. 

Advent (next Sunday) means an approach, a coming, an arriving. Having the Last Judgment this Sunday and a new season beginning next Sunday, it is as if we have been given another chance at life, almost a new life, especially if we are aware that real change for the better is needed in our life. Then we have the luxury, as it were, of doing something about it, unlike that dreaded moment before the Lord of Life, when it will be too late to do anything! What we should all desire is mentioned in the second reading: “Christ the first fruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ”. Can I state without fear of contradiction “I belong to Christ“? As St. Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). If we are in Christ Jesus, then Christ Jesus is in us, obeying his will in all things.

St. Patrick, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Port Clinton, Ohio, USA. 

“St. Patrick’s Breastplate“ ⬅︎ Click here and meditate on a hymn which seems to grasp at this idea of all in Christ and Christ in all, a suitable ending to the church year.

The Good Shepherd, Anastpaul.com.

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