THE
LAST THINGS - part 2
JUDGment
…it is appointed for men to die
once, and after that comes judgment… Hebrews 9:27
What
is Judgment in the Christian sense?
As we saw in the last
session, “death puts an end to human life as a time open to either accepting or rejecting the
divine grace manifested in Christ.” (CCC 1021) So the opportunity to
repent is now over. God’s mercy and compassion is expressed in giving us a life
in which to use our freedom of will either to be for Him or against Him. God
the Father has bestowed on us, through His Son, many opportunities to cooperate
with grace. The more we have been offered, the more is expected of us. Judgment
is then the application of truth and justice.
There are two sorts of
judgment that occur. One occurs before Christ comes again at the end of time,
and the other occurs following His second coming (known as the “parousia” – see diagram above). One form
of judgment is applied individually to a person’s life, the other is applied collectively.
Particular
Judgment – “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his
immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that
refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven –
through a purification or immediately – or immediate and everlasting damnation.”
CCC 1022
General
Judgment (Last Judgment) – this occurs after the second
coming of Christ and will be dealt with in a later session on the Parousia. It is not judgment of an
individual but in a way a corporate judgment.
Judgment
is the application of Truth to our lives
Particular Judgment is
made by Christ upon our lives. It is the coming of divine truth to the way we have
spent the gift of our lives.
Isn’t
God being harsh?
The concept of being
held to account for our moral decisions can seem to some modern ears as a harsh
thing! But divine judgment is not the arbitrary whim of a powerful being who
somehow enjoys inflicting punishments. Holy Scripture tells us that God desires
all men to be saved. God judges us while desiring all to be saved but also
honouring the fact that He has created us all in His image with freedom of
will.
It is the consequence
of our freedom of will that has made us culpable for our sins. God has given us
baptism to free us from the consequences of sin (original & personal). God
has given us grace to be able to resist temptation. God has revealed to us in
Scripture and Tradition what sin is and how serious it is. But as free beings
we have the capability of going against His revelation and grace, and going our
own way and sinning.
There are always
consequences to our sin. It is never purely just between us and God. Sin
affects everything (just as charity affects everything). These consequences of
our sin we and others can experience in this life as suffering. Judgment is about the reality of these
consequences being fully revealed.
The
apostles said, Who then can be saved?
In Christ, the Father
has given us, His children, in our weakness, the ability to be forgiven and
healed in Christ’s Church. As you listen to the gospels, do you not notice how
often our Lord says to someone, “Your sins are forgiven”? He says this often even
when He is healing a physical ailment. It is His divine Mission to rescue us
from the consequences of choosing to sin because without His rescue we are
doomed.
However Christ does not
compel us to take His medicine. We still have freedom of will. So after Baptism
we can still sin. But God has, of course, thought of that. On the day of
Resurrection, when Christ breathed the Holy Spirit on the 11 Apostles, He said
to them, “Those whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and those whose sins you
retain, are retained.”
In this life God has
given the baptised the means, through His Church, of being forgiven and healed
of our sin. The means consists of doing the following:-
1.
Examining
our lives with a view to repentance – using Holy Scripture, Tradition and the
teaching of the Church to determine if we have disobeyed God’s Law ;
2.
Compunction
- being sorry for our sins, for the way they have offended God ;
3.
Purposing
to amend our lives – even if we know we are struggling, we still need this
purpose;
4.
Obtain
absolution – ‘going to Confession’ with a catholic priest ;
5.
Penance
– acts of reparation that show our sorrow and are seeking to make amends ;
6.
Receiving
Holy Communion frequently while in a state of grace;
7.
Prayer
– maintaining closeness to God and trusting in His Promises.
It is possible that by
this way we can be released from all the consequences of our sins no matter what the sins are. We can
this way not only avoid hell, but it is possible to avoid purgatory as well.
This gift of our
redemption by Christ on the Cross should be something that always amazes us and
causes us to rejoice. This tremendous gift of being able to be reconciled with
God and being able to do penance now for our sins is one we should never take
for granted nor neglect. How tragic it would be to come to our particular
judgment with sins that we could have had absolved but for no good reason we didn’t
go to confession? This is why the Church requires
all its members (who can physically do so) to go to confession at minimum once a year. She makes it a Precept
of our life of grace out of love for us!
The
result of particular judgment
There are only two
possibilities for eternity - they are called heaven and hell. It is either
the blessedness of heaven or the damnation of hell. It is either to be with God
for eternity or separated from Him for eternity. We may temporarily be held
back from Heaven for a time of purification (known as Purgatory), but every
soul in Purgatory will come to Heaven sooner or later before the parousia.
