1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2
Troparion
Matthew 25:31-46



"Of My Own
I Can Do Nothing for You"

"I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge." (John 5:30)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Yesterday we celebrated our Day of the Dead liturgy, on the eve of Last Judgment Sunday, and heard startling words. Speaking as our Great Judge, the Lord Jesus warns us,

"I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge." (John 5:30)
Personal feelings will not come into it. "I will call it as I see it," He tells us. And this is not the first time that He has issued this warning:
"Not every one who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter
the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father
Who is in Heaven. On that day many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord,
did we not prophesy in Your Name, and cast out demons in
Your Name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me ...'" (Mt 7:21-23)
Or in the Gospel according to St. Luke, we read,
"Why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?
Every one who comes to Me and hears My words and does them,
I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house,
who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon rock; ... But he who
hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house
on the ground without a foundation; ... and immediately it fell,
and the ruin of that house was great." (Luke 6:46-49)
We may well imagine that the compassionate Jesus of Nazareth — Who was moved to pity when others were not (Mk 6:34, Mt 9:36, Mt 20:34 ...) — often was touched personally by the people He met and knew, but their winning ways, their engaging personalities, their charming traits will not come into consideration at the Last Judgment. Does Jesus not weep over Jerusalem, which will be annihilated following their general rejection of God's Son (Luke 19:41ff)? Does He not pour out His love over Jerusalem like a mother for her children?
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you!
How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, ... (Luke 13:34)
But these feelings, so powerful, so sincere, so pure, will not enter into the fearful calculus of Jerusalem's Judgment:
"For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you
and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and
your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you;
because you did not know the time of your visitation." (Luke 19:44-45)
The Last Reckoning will come based strictly on the accounts. What has been said, has been said. And what has been done, has been done.

Yes, Jesus' personal feelings may move Him to pity in the private spaces of a grieving Heart. But this grief will not alter His Judgment. Yet, at the end of the day, it will be ourselves who act as judge. For all our lives, we have been the masters of our thoughts and choices, the "decider" of the content of our personal histories and the corresponding state of our souls. Jesus will see and then act based entirely on this: what is, not what might have been.

Innovations in the Western Catholic Church, especially during the twentieth century, have misled the faithful to the great hazard of their souls. I knew a man who visited us in Haiti on an annual basis — a good and sincere man. He was also an intelligent and well-informed man who owned a company and was educated in Jesuit schools. He told me one afternoon at the airport in Port-au-Prince that all people would be swept into Heaven on account of Jesus' famous mercy and compassion.

"But, Ned," I replied, "if everyone goes to Heaven, that means that are just as many bad people in Heaven as there are on earth .... in fact, many, many more, for no one in Heaven ever dies."

"No, no, no, Father!" he laughed. "There's no one bad in Heaven! ... because God makes everyone good!"

"But, Ned, if God makes everyone good, then how could this be Heaven? It sounds more like a child's playroom filled with puppets."

"No, no! Heaven's not filled with puppets! Heaven is .... Heaven!"

"I don't know, Ned. It seems to me there are only two alternatives: if God opens the Gates of Heaven to everyone, no matter what they're like, then Heaven is going to be full of thugs. If God makes everyone good, then Heaven is full of puppets .... or robots. The question is, which do you want? Thugs or robots?"

When we begin to scratch the surface of the ancient heresy of universalism — the doctrine that all people will be saved irrespective of the lives they have lived — we begin to envision not an All-wise, All-loving God, Whom we adore, but rather a puppet master. To bring all the people on earth into Heaven gets us to a place where Heaven would have no purpose, for we'd already be in it ... except that it goes on forever. Bad men, perverted men, cruel men never come to judgment.

Yet, to live in a world where all men and women are to be emotionally and spiritually "sanitized" would be to live in a police state where mind control is carried out. Everyone would be stripped of their dignity — of their own ideas and choices and creativity: of their freedom. We would enter a Twilight Zone where a mad king sits alone with his lifeless creatures in a surreal playroom. G.K. Chesterton commented that "Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice."

The grave heresy of universalism also ignores the plainly spoken words of the Gospel:

Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs
will hear His voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection
of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28-29)
You see, inheriting eternal life is not a special gift reserved for the virtuous. It is part of the general human condition. Humans are the only creatures God made to be permanent and the only creatures He made to be holy. The question is not whether each of us will receive eternal life. We all will .... and have. The question is where we will have eternal life. Forever.

As Psalm 115 teaches,

The Heavens are the Lord's Heavens,
but the earth He has given to the sons of men.
He has granted us the precious gift of complete freedom and sovereignty. Upon this gift everything must depend.

What is the path to Heaven, then? What is the nature of our salvation? This is the subject being laid before us this morning in our lectionary readings. Our God is a calling God. And His personal nature is relationship as revealed in the Holy Trinity. He is Himself a Society of Love. It follows that our encounter with Him is relationship par excellence.

♱


I have taken a long route before approaching the famous Gospel lesson found in Matthew, Chapter 25. But that is because this passage has proved to be a stumbling block for many. The words are so well known, they scarcely need be said:
"' ... for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me,
I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'
Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see Thee hungry and feed Thee,
or thirsty and give Thee drink? And when did we see Thee a stranger and welcome Thee,
or naked and clothe Thee? And when did we see Thee sick or in prison and visit Thee?'
And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least
of these my brethren, you did it to Me.'" (Mt 25:35-40)
No matter how many times they are repeated, the hairs on the back of our neck stand on end — words that have prompted many a young woman or man to turn away from the world and serve the Apostolate in the Third and Fourth Worlds. And of these many young people, who in their faithfulness became old people still serving that Apostolate, we do not hesitate to say that they have inherited the Kingdom of Heaven, beckoning to them from the foundations of the world.

Along with theological innovations of the twentieth-century we heard preached from Western pulpits the heretical message that "Service is real religion." If that were true, then let us all cease our prayer life, disregard moral living, and set aside our love of God and our personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. Let us instead volunteer at soup kitchens and tithe to the United Way. Wouldn't that cover the waterfront?

Sadly, I have met nuns, priests, ministers, and assorted other so-called religious people who did just that. They had given their life to service — some even in conditions of privation and danger — but lived their private lives exactly as they wanted including promiscuity and perversion. They told themselves, "Did I not give food to the hungry? Did I not clothe the naked and comfort the afflicted?"

Riding alone in a car with a man who is accounted to be a great humanitarian, I soon realized that he was picking my brain on a subject dear to him. "Does this Gospel passage found at Matthew 25 propose a contract concerning the Last Judgment?" He had developed a theology such that his many grave sins did not really matter so long as he fed the poor, clothed the naked, and comforted the sick. He had come to envision a kind of "Matthew 25 deal." I told him that the Lord Jesus does not make deals. He seeks relationship, eye-to-eye relationship, in which His immaculate soul sees with perfect clarity the state of our own souls. This is the essence of the Last Judgment.

What our Gospel lesson at Matthew 25 proposes this morning is to peer into the state of our souls, the business of our lives, and the direction of our thoughts. Are we "all talk" like the proud Pharisee? Alternatively, do we lay it all down on the line for Jesus every day but lie in a sinful bed every night? What God asks is that we commit our entire lives, every part of us in a wholesome integrity, to His way of life, becoming the sort of children who live as the Father would have us to live.

Like the Prodigal Son, it will not matter how much love has been poured out upon us if our hearts and souls fall beneath the standard of God's own heart. The famous compassion of Jesus will not matter if we have not risen in our own lives to the standard of His compassion. We will not wear the ring placed on the Prodigal's hand or wear the best robe until we can look at eye level into the Great Judge's unerring gaze, and He sees a heart like His own, which is the nature and essence of the Father in Heaven Who sent Him.

It will not matter how merciful or how understanding the Lord Jesus may be. Of His Own He can do nothing for us. As He sees, He will judge.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.