"Last Judgment" is a dangerous phrase, for many hear it to mean something that happens later, much later. But it is last in the sense of what everything means ultimately or "at last," we say, "What something means at the end of the day." It is not so much a when phrase as it is a what phrase. The Gospels, the Pauline Correspondence, the Catholic letters all teach that the Last Judgment is to be expected at any and every moment. It is happening now and always. And this is right, for it has to do with the state of our souls and the tenderness of our hearts. As it is closely linked to our deaths, we must remember that the eternity we step into is an always now phenomenon, not a timeline. As far as timelines go, all judgments have already occurred. For God-in-eternity the Last Judgment has already happened.

Our first-hand experience confirms this intersection of timelines and eternity. Those who tend the sick and dying, have witnessed marvelous things at the point of death — not a suspended animation in a cold grave awaiting the sound of a trumpet, but a lively, joyful immersion into the greater life unfolding before the dying man or woman with loved ones standing at the gate. I have also witnessed men, reputedly men of God, dragged off to Hell directly from their death beds .... at least that is how I interpreted their terror and screaming, crying out at demons (in one such case).

Orthodoxy teaches that our deaths are followed by a forty-day period of testing. This also happens in eternity, so we must understand the human conception of a forty-day period of purgation and temptation in that eternal wilderness — a timeline from the human perspective, but for God, the state of our soul and heart, always a now thing. We promise ourselves that we will be good in the end. We will be good soon. We will be good later. St. Augustine famously prayed, "O Lord, be Ruler of my life .... but not tonight."

I do not doubt that St. John the Theologian, St. Mary of Egypt, St. Anthony the Desert, St. Seraphim of Sarov and other Elders have passed over these trials, this forty-day period, as the Most Holy Theotokos, passing from life here to life with God seamlessly and serenely, perhaps not noticing the difference. As the Roman Catholic saint, Catherine of Sienna, has said, "It is nothing but Heaven all the way to Heaven." We affirm this, praying in the Perfect Prayer, "save us from the time of trial" (Mt 6:13), with the Greek πειρασμον (peirasmon) referring to an eschatological event following upon the parousia, not the temptations we may encounter from day to day.

This is a longstanding theological debate — not so much a "lead me not unto temptation" in that sense of what will happen this afternoon, but rather "save me from the time of trial" .... "that we may not be judged before the great Judgment Seat of Christ."

Surely, I do not dispute the doctrine of the parousia. Each moment, we look for His coming. "Come quickly!" the Scriptures conclude. This is a human event, a cataclysm that will even a world at odds. The Lord Jesus will return, but not as our Savior bringing boundless mercy, rather as our King, declaring perfect justice to an unjust world. From the eternal viewpoint, His victory is always already in hand. From the human perspective it will be a struggle, the greatest struggle, but isn't that what earthly life is? A struggle to claim the Divine in a fallen world?

Our part in this struggle, beginning now, beginning always, is to ask, "What is this Christian life I say that I lead?" Today's Gospel lesson moves us down this path. To many Christians the answer is, "to love everyone" and "to do good deeds." But as we search deeper into the New Testament, that popular impression becomes complicated. Would, for example, large contributions made to the United Way constitute Christian life? A millionaire, whose spiritual life did not square with the Kingdom of Heaven, asked me once if he had not fulfilled his contract with God by doing all that was spelled out in Matthew 25. I told him, God does not make deals. Service is not a religion, nor is it "the real faith" (a tagline he had from many Roman Catholic pulpits during the course of his life). God cares about one thing — that we love Him the way that He loves us. And if we do, then we will keep his commandments.

Matthew 25 is poetic and moving selection from among His commandments. It is something one does naturally if he or she is filled with the love of God. Surely, Christian life is not a willy-nilly pouring out of love in every direction.

St. John, the Beloved Disciple, admonishes,

The parable is an illustration of Jesus' encounter with the blessed scribe, who says,

Just before His arrest and passion, Jesus says,

The scene is reminiscent of another teaching following the Last Supper. Jesus says to the Father,

In this light, let us take a closer look at Matthew 25 — of feeding the hungry, befriending the stranger, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick? The litany sets out a roll call of the afflicted — an underclass oppressed by a privileged and proud overclass. This point is underlined in any major city where those who dine in expensive restaurants, attend opera, and wander the glittering halls of museums, must navigate around and through the afflicted who hold out their hands in a desperate bid to avoid starvation and exposure to the cold. For these city dwellers such navigations are a distraction. For God they are the primary subject. God does not want to know who is performing at Lincoln Center; He wants to know what will become of this abandoned woman tonight when the temperatures drop below freezing.

The world is the implacable enemy of God expressing its hatred in every mistreatment of God's beloved outcasts. The world despises the suffering and the needy. We read this over and over again in the Gospels. Jesus takes pains to say "the least of these" (Mt 25:40), the least among the naked, the hungry, the sick — true outcasts. The forgotten and the invisible.

We must never forget that our God was born into the world as an outcast, laying midst dung-stained hay:

These are the hearts that belong to God — open, tender, aching for love and acceptance. I have been shoulder-to-shoulder with the most suffering people in the Western Hemisphere in prostate Haiti, kneeling on the ground, hands clenched in prayer. As they looked up at the consecrated Host held aloft by a priest, tears streamed down their faces. I have seen this love of God with all one's heart, with all one's soul, with all one's mind, and with all one's strength. This is not a distant abstraction or goal. It is a state of the heart.

To clothe and feed the outcast is to participate in God's pure and self-sacrificing love. The Gospels and all the Christian writings see two worlds before us. To one side are sincere and open hearts loving God. These are the sheep. To the other, proud, strident spirits habituating a dog-pack mentality pushing others down that they might rise higher. Perhaps they have invented a false god who has declared universal love and Who sweeps everyone into Heaven on account of His famous mercy, without regard to the hardness of their hearts. These are the goats.

When Jesus tells His Apostles, "The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few" (Lu 10:2), what does He mean? "Why is the harvest plentiful?" The harvest is abundant because these people from all across the Levant have heard the Word of God spoken from His very lips. They have been convicted of the Truth. He has left tens of thousands in His wake. Perhaps hundreds of thousands. They abide in the doctrine of Christ. Here is the harvest, not off to one side, not weeds, not thorns, not briers. The disciples are to marshal their time and their resources. This is the Lord's command. Should they encounter one that is not of the harvest, then they must move on lest they neglect the ones whom God has sent. And the time of life is short.

Today, it is no different. We are surrounded by people whom the Lord has sent to us. They have encountered God, and now they are searching for the next thing they must do. Their hearts are open. And this is where we shall meet them, with our own open hearts. More Divine appointments lie before us than we are able to keep. Let us go on then, not wasting the day, but laboring in the harvest.

Here is Christian life. Along the way we shall meet with our brothers and sisters — knowing the same truths, hearing the same Divine commands, loving the same God and Father of all. More often than not, they will be outcasts. And this is right, for they were born into the world to bear His Image, and in this world our God is an outcast, Who "went unto His own, and His own received Him not."