The Last Judgment and the Last Things

A Homily for the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe

Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17

1 Corinthians 15:20-26,28

Matthew 25:31-46

If you ever happen to encounter anyone who says that Catholics don't have some understanding of eschatology or the end times, or the end of all things, today's Gospel ought to disabuse anyone who might mistakenly believe such things of that notion. On this Feast of Jesus Christ the King, Sovereign Priest and King of the Universe, the Church takes us to the conclusion of a lengthy discourse from Jesus to the Apostles as he was about to begin his Passion in earnest, and it is a discourse that takes up two entire chapters of Sacred Scripture, and lengthy chapters at that. We don't have time to go through them today but I want to invite each and every one of you to read both of those Chapters, Matthew 24 and 25. Jesus's discourse to the Apostles here is sometimes called the apocalyptic discourse, because at the beginning of it, they're all looking at the Great Temple in Jerusalem, and Jesus informs them that lo and behold, that beautiful House of God they were seeing in that moment, many of them would live to see the day when not one stone would be left upon another of the place. They then posed the questions to Jesus: “When shall these things be, and what shall be the sign of your coming and of the end of the Age?” Jesus then takes them on a journey through time and gives them a preview of what their lives are going to be like as followers of Christ when he's gone, and indeed what the lives of many future believers and martyrs through the Ages would be like.

The end of chapter 24 and chapter 25 is largely Jesus' answer to the second question, when the end would be, and Jesus makes it clear that that's not for us to know, but it will be like it was in the days of Noah, he says, when people were basically carrying on normal lives until Noah got in the ark and the flood came and washed people away. They didn't believe the end would come until it came, they just went about their business, and Jesus said that before the end of days, life would seem pretty normal to most people until the end finally comes. In our Gospel today Jesus gives us the clearest picture in the Bible of what the Last Judgment is going to be like. We are given a picture of a judgment where Christ will sit on his throne as King of the Universe and be the judge of all the world. He will separate the sheep from the goats, that is those who have truly been his followers, as opposed to those who have rejected him either publicly or in secret.

What does he tell us he's going to ask us when we approach His Throne in Judgment? Is he going to say: “Well, did you accept me as your personal Savior and have a personal relationship with me?” Nowhere in Scripture does it tell us that he's going to ask us that question. This isn't to say that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is unimportant or that we should not have one. Those of you who have heard my preaching over the years know that I have discussed the necessity of such a personal relationship with the Lord and the need to constantly maintain it. There are none of us, including myself, whose relationship with the Lord doesn't need improvement. The Lord always wants us to draw closer to him. However, when he judges us about our worthiness to enter into his Kingdom for Eternity, that will not be the question of the hour.

In the Gospel today we truly see Jesus Christ reigning as King of the Universe, sitting on his throne as Sovereign and Supreme Judge, rendering the final and decisive judgment on all humanity as only he can. He does not tell us in this passage that we need to be perfect in order to enter into the joy of our Master's House. We know that we are works in progress and we will be works in progress when the Lord returns again. We are already told that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive them. Instead what we will be asked to determine if we truly know the Lord is whether when we saw the Lord hungry, we fed him. If we saw him thirsty did we give him something to drink? If we saw the Lord naked did we clothe him? If our Lord was sick or in prison did we visit him? Our Lord tells us that if we saw a hungry brother and fed them, a brother or sister thirsty and gave them a drink, if we welcome a stranger we do the same for him. If we visit our sick brothers and sisters, if we visit our brothers and sisters in prison we do the same for him. Jesus makes it clear that those who do these things will be invited to inherit the Kingdom of God, that we will be with the Lord forever. The challenge of what Jesus is telling us here is what happens if we don't do these things. If we don't do these things, Jesus tells us we don't get to inherit the Kingdom. I don't know about you, but it's a real challenge to me to do better to care for my neighbor. Jesus is pretty clear that when he judges us at the end of all things that is going to be the standard.

We know that many of our Evangelical brothers and sisters have a very rich personal faith and relationship with the Lord Jesus. However, the great flaw in that theology, in that soterology or doctrine of salvation, is that our works have nothing to do with our being saved. It is absolutely true that our works by themselves cannot save us because there is nothing that we can do to earn the love and mercy of Jesus, there is nothing we can do to earn Eternal Life no matter how hard we try. However, as St. James is quick to remind us, faith without works is dead. We cannot be justified before God without the evidence of a real faith based on our actions as well as our profession of faith. Jesus makes that abundantly clear in his description of the Last Judgment and the questions that he will ask us. We are not justified before God by faith alone. Yes, that is the idea that was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation and it is demonstrably false.

Jesus makes it clear to us how he will judge us and hold us accountable. Some people say that the apocalyptic literature of Scripture is open to interpretation, but today's Gospel is a vivid picture of the four Last Things, that is death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Jesus's words to us are a challenge not only to profess him in words but to live our faith out in our lives and before others in a way that it can be seen, because the Lord sees us. He knows the secret disposition of our hearts, he knows what we think and how we feel in the depths of our soul, and he knows the things about us that we wouldn't ever tell the world or perhaps not ever tell anyone else.

Each year at this time as we end the liturgical year and then next week begin Advent, we are reminded in the Church's daily and weekly scripture readings of the reality that our existence in this universe is finite. One day our existence on this Earth will come to an end and we will stand before God in judgment, but since all things in this world do come to an end we are reminded that one day the world as we know it will also come to an end. We are reminded on the Feast of Christ the King that one day we will stand before the King of the Universe and the Lord of all creation and give an account of the life we lived on this Earth, of the faith we professed, and the Lord will ask us what we did with the life he gave us. We should make it our mission to ensure that when we stand before King Jesus, we are not as those people Jesus warns about earlier in the Gospel of Matthew who say to him “but Lord, we prophesied in your name and worked miracles,” only for the Lord to reply “depart from me, I never knew you.’

When we stand before the King, will he tell us that he knows us?