Having established the need for metanoia and the gracious love God offers to us if we return to him on the Sundays of the Publican and Pharisee and the Prodigal Son, the Byzantine calendar now reminds us how these themes are to be brought together on the last day of history, the last judgment. Christ, as we proclaim in the Nicene Creed every week, is going to come again to judge the living and the dead, and no one will escape his tribunal. It is a day of expectation as much as a day of dread. We shall finally see ourselves as we truly are – not as we pretend to be, especially to ourselves, but we will know ourselves in the way God does, beyond all delusion. Not only that, we will see the potential we had, who we could have been, and where we have failed to become, and it will be in that light we will be judged. How have we used the life given to us? Have we squandered it, burying the life God has given, hiding it from everyone, so as not to lose it, or have we embraced it (however imperfectly), used the gifts God has given us, no matter the danger that entailed, so as to bring glory to God? How have we used the talent he saw fit to put under our stewardship (cf. Matt 25:14 -30)? Even one who is ignorant of God can bring glory to him through the work they do – for if God could make stones children of Abraham (Lk 3:8) and these stones would cry out if the disciples of the Word remained silent (Lk 19:39), it should not be surprising that God will be shown to have been praised by those who in their lives appeared to be unbelievers[1].
We are shown in the images of the last judgment that Christ will be the Pantocrator, the all-ruling judge. He is righteous in his judgment, and his decisions will be merciful even as they are just; no one will be able to contradict his pronouncements. He will show himself as the great and dreaded Lord, and, when we find ourselves in the dock, there will be nothing we can do but bow down and kneel to him while he shows us who we are and who we have become. And yet, he will show us something else: his authority is found in his humility. “The judge appears as a figure of power (Rev 1:12 – 16), which, however, includes within itself his powerlessness, not as a part of his past that can now be forgotten, but as the constant presupposition of his authority: ‘I was dead, but behold, I live for all eternity and I have the keys of death and of the underworld’ (Rev 1:18).”[2] Glory comes out of self-sacrificial love, and we will find that if we have embraced the way of love we have seen and embraced God himself.
Within the context of the end point in human history, as we find our own life revealed, we will also find out that the two are united and one: the common destiny of humanity is united with the personal destiny of all who are human. And at this crisis point, we will find there are two possible outcomes for us, eternal life or eternal death, and it will be determined by the person we have become: have we embraced the way of life, which is the way of love, or have we embraced the way of death, which is the way of self-seeking gain without any love for anyone but oneself (if even that).[3]
When Christ talks about the last judgment in the Gospels, he tells us that it will be of works. We must not assume that mere belief is enough to make us his disciple; rather, we must have love, a love which keeps Jesus’ commandments (John 14:15). Through love we will have found the living faith, and it can be justified in the eschaton (James 2:14-26). This is exactly the point Jesus makes when he describes that fateful tribunal and shows that we will be saved or damned depending upon how we treated the needy (Matt 25: 31 – 46), because, as we will find, we are doing to and for him what we do to others, whether it is helping them or ignoring them. Of course Jesus is not asking us to do more than he himself has done; he looked upon us and saw us lowly and needy, destitute to the core, and let nothing stand in his way, not even his life, to give us what we needed for our own wellbeing. Love knows no desire but the welfare of the beloved. Because it is in that love God, who can be said to be love itself, will be found and embraced, we must fulfill the dictates of love if we want to obtain him at the final judgment. To be accept the love of God we must love; if we deny love, even if we proclaim Jesus on our lips, we will find Jesus does not know us because we did not know him but some imitator (Matt 7:23).
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:29-30). Christ does not expect the impossible from us. “If someone should say that no one is able to keep the commandments, let him know that he is slandering and condemning God as having ordered us to do what is impossible. This man will not escape the inevitability of justice but, like the man who said, ‘I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you did not winnow’ [Mt 25:24], so will he be condemned.”[4] The expectations of love are not burdens to imprison us and make life miserable. Rather, their fulfillment makes life worth living, and true freedom possible. Christ, of course, only expects of us that which we can do, that which is only within our power — he does not expect us to do all things for everyone, because no one can do so.[5]
O God, when You shall come down upon earth in your glory, every creature shall tremble before You. A river of fire shall flow before your judgment-seat, the books shall be opened, and all secrets revealed. On that day, O Just Judge, deliver me from eternal fire and make me worthy to stand at your right hand (Kontakion of the Last Judgment).
The time of the judgment is coming, but we do not know the day or the hour. Either we will die and then find ourselves before the seat of judgment, or we shall be here when the kingdom of God is revealed, when the earth itself is transformed as if by fire, at the second coming of Christ. Since we do not know which it will be, we should, in every moment of our lives, expect the possibility of each, and to live our lives accordingly. One could say this is the reason why Jesus could not tell the hour in which the kingdom will come, since there is no universal answer, but it is dependent upon the subject who inquires – for, at the hour we die, that is when we shall enter the ever-lasting day of the Lord. For those imprisoned by sin, the dread judgment ahead should be enough to help them reconsider their lives and repent, since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.[6] But this is not enough, the only way to reach the height of wisdom is to find out its end is achieved in love. We might at first seek to do good and to avoid evil because we want eternal happiness. But the more we give of ourselves to others, the more we live a life of virtue, the more love we show, the more we will understand the rules of love, the joy of love, and what eternal beatitude entails: the gift of ourselves to others, both to our neighbor and to God. We can only become who we are meant to be through self-sacrificial love, and they become who they are meant to be by similarly loving us; and in that love, that mutual bond which will join us together, we see God.
We pray to be made worthy to stand at the Lord’s right hand, and we know that determination will be made by our works. Whence, then is grace? It is the power of the resurrection, it is the power of transformation, it is the power of deification which supplies what is wanting in us if we are open to it; but the only way to be open to it is to be open to love, for in God, his grace and his love are one. Our conscience, as St Bonaventure tells us, will be the book by which we are judged, because it is our conscience which will know the secrets within the heart, and how we lived in the world.[7] Everything will be revealed by Christ, who will show us which path we have taken, either the road of life and love which opens us up to the bountiful grace of God, or the road of death and despair, in which we would have closed ourselves up from others. Hell is the result of the second, because we will get that which we sought, ourselves, locked up and imprisoned, away from everyone else, in our own little kingdom of one, wherein we will be our own Lord who promises everything we ever wanted, but, trapped as we are, powerless to achieve it. In hell, we will have made our own individualized self Lord, but it shall be a false Lord, one who cannot do as expected, because we will have been led away from God, the source of all that which is good and true. In this way, we will have become for ourselves our very own anti-Christ. Only if we overcome the self and its false Lordship can we find the true Christ, who, as the Second Adam, wants to lead all of humanity to the promised kingdom of God.
Footnotes
[1] For it must be said that an unbeliever can be doing the work of God, and the end of their action, unknown to them, is God. They live out their lives in faith (as obedience) to God’s directions, and so they will find out what they did not know until that eschatological moment: they truly believed even if they said they did not, and they have said yes to God in their hearts, even if on their lips they apparently said no. This, of course, explains why St Paul was able to see how pagans, who did not know God, worshiped him as the Unknown God (Acts 17:23), and relates to his understanding of the final judgment of the gentiles, where they will be judged according to their conscience (Rom 2:15-16).
[2] Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Eschatology in Outline”, pg. 423 – 467 in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution. Trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 449.
[3] The Didache beautifully contrasts the two, with the way of life being the way of the love for God and for one’s neighbor (following Matt 22:37- 39), while the way death is “wicked and full of cursing, murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts, idolatries, witchcrafts, charms, robberies, false witness, hypocrisies, a double heart, fraud, pride, malice, stubbornness, covetousness, foul speech, jealousy, impudence, haughtiness, boastfulness” – that is, anything which one does to take for oneself at the expense of others. The Didache, pgs 309 – 333 in The Apostolic Fathers I. trans. Kirsopp Lake (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 317-19.
[4] St Symeon the New Theologian, On The Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses. Volume I: The Church and the Last Things. Trans. Alexander Golitzin (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995),149.
[5] “And in return for what do they receive such things? For the covering of a roof, for a garment, for bread, for cold water, for visiting, for going into the prison. For indeed in every case it is for what is needed; and sometimes not even for that. For surely, as I have said, the sick and he that is in bonds seeks not for this only, but the one to be loosed, the other to be delivered from his infirmity. But He, being gracious, requires only what is within our power, or rather even less than what is within our power, leaving to us to exert our generosity in doing more,” St John Chrysostom, Homilies on The Gospel of St. Matthew, LXXIX in NPNF1 (10), 476.
[6] “For if He had distinctly stated the day, he would seem to have laid down a rule of life for that one age which was nearest to the judgment, and the just man in earlier times would be more negligent, and the sinner more free from care. For the adulterer cannot cease from the desire of committing adultery unless he fears punishment day by day, nor can the robber forsake the hiding places in the woods where he dwells, unless he knows punishment is hanging over him day by day. For impurity generally spurs them on, but fear is irksome to the end,” St Ambrose, On The Christian Faith Book V. trans. Red. H. de Romestin. NPNF2 (10), 310-11.
[7]“On this point we must hold these truths in summa: that there will undoubtedly be a future judgment of everyone in the universe, and in this judgment God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ will judge the living and the dead, the good and the wicked, rendering to each according to his works. In this judgment there will be an opening of the books, namely, of the consciences of men through which the merits and demerits of everyone in the universe will be made known to himself and to others, and this by the power of that book of life, namely, of the incarnate Word,” St Bonavanture, Breviloquium. Trans. Erwin Esser Nemmers (London: B. Herder Book Co., 1946), 217.
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