Today we enter a meditation on the Last Judgment. Preparing us, last Wednesday, we celebrated the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple. The prophet Simeon held the Child Jesus aloft and pronounced Him to be the Sign of Contradiction (trans., Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, CO). In the imposing sphere of this Child will collide two worlds: the Kingdom of God in its perfect rectitude and a tawdry world that is willfully out-of-joint with God's rightness and goodness. Considering the awesome sublime of God, William Blake wrote,

The narrow, human mind can scarcely endure the radiant excellence of God's expansive Nature and Ways! What a cataclysm we behold in this collision, reprising the War in Heaven!

The Book of Revelation depicts this conflict as the engagement of two armies. Yet, the human scale of this battle is fought mainly within the sacred precincts of the soul. Certainly, physical skirmishes are seen in the pouring out of martyrs' blood. But the great battle mainly takes place

We see sketched in silhouette three figures on the most fearsome hill ever trod. At the center is the King of the Universe and the Creator of all worlds, visible and invisible. That He should hang upon a cross, executed as a criminal, is humanity's most extreme expression of contradiction. The fearful rectitude (literally "at right angles") of the Holy Cross is almost unintelligible to a world so out-of-square with God that it cannot recognize the Holy One standing in its very midst. Yet a pagan centurion plainly sees Him: "Truly," he said, "this man was the Son of God" (Mk 15:33).

On either side of Him are two men whose names mean nearly the same thing. To His left is Gestas. His name means "deeds" or "what I have done," signifying the end of life. Whether Jesus is God's Son is of no importance to him, for Gestas is lost in a world of ego and, therefore, of bitter resentment. He exalts himself admitting no fault. If he is aliented from Heaven, what is that to him?!

To the Lord's right is Dismas. His name means "to the west," "at the setting of the sun," also signifying the end of life, where all deeds are done and all words have been said. He is filled with remorse, saying to Gestas,

Dismas venerates the Son of God and greatly cares whether his heart and mind are trued to Heaven's lineaments.

If this silhouette of three crosses, of the end of life, is the great icon of setting "the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left" (Mt 25:33), then surely Dismas represents the sheep:

On this hilltop is depicted the judgment of mankind. There are no feats of arms, only stirrings of souls. Dismas declares in heart-breaking tones, ".... this Man has done nothing wrong." He opens his soul to receive the gift of the Christ's ransom. He requites the redemptive love of God. He will not see judgment, but rather Paradise.

But what of the many who do not requite God's love? We need not speculate. Let us hear the Lord's teaching to His Apostles:

"in the day of judgment .... for that city"!

As for the ones who do receive the Apostles and their words and their peace and their blessing .... as with Dismas, for them there will be no judgment. No judgment. For the Creator and Judge of our world has declared boldly and unambiguously,

The righteous are not called to be transformed, with an implied measurement against a standard. Their lives are not out-of-joint with the Kingdom's fearful symmetry. They are already trued to God's Mind. To measure the variance between their souls with God's will would be a pointless exercise .... and certainly not a trusting and loving one. As with the case of Dismas, the verdict has already coincided with the state of the heart and the soul: "This day you will be with Me in Paradise." With these Gospel principles in mind, let us read this morning's lesson.

There are few Gospel pericopes more frequently consulted than Matthew 25. For it is read by many as a contract, as a quid pro quo: "If I do this, then I get that." If I feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the alien, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and console prisoners, then I will receive entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Sadly, I have known clergy and vowed religious who, after doing precisely these things all day, lived notorious lives at night. I knew a man who founded a charity which did precisely these things but who persecuted and cheated the saints of God. These people were confident of their eternal destinations on account of Matthew 25. (One actually told me so as I sat in the passenger seat of his imposing Lincoln Town Car.) But such a proposition clings to the letter of this passage, ignoring its spiritual content. In particular, this famous passage describes the behavior of souls that are already trued to the ways of God. The Apostle does not set out a little stage play that we are to ape. For this would be to mock God. And we need not guess at God's response:

And what is lawlessness? We need not consult the "Wanted" posters at the Post Office to define lawlessness. Lawlessness is to act in a way that is abhorrent to Heaven.

Judgment examines integrity. It examines how every part of us coheres into a whole without contradiction. Our state-of-soul does not equate with the carrying out of six chores. Rather, it is the other way around. These six chores, and seventy times seven chores, are all the natural outcome of our state-of-soul. We will arise every morning and do these things as a function of who we are.

The question of integrity underlies the concept of the Aerial Toll Houses, found in the Church's hymnography and in the writings of certain Fathers (e.g., St. Athanasius, Life of St. Antony). The idea that we might pay our way into Heaven at the tollhouses, as the wealthy founder of the charity believed, would argue for a physical geography of the Kingdom. It pictures the Kingdom of God as a vast country surrounded by a great wall guarded by angels and surrounded by an outer ring, where angels collect tolls.

To the contrary, God's Kingdom is the non-geographical union of sanctified souls who are at-One with the Father even as the Son and the Father are united as One (Jn 17:21). The Kingdom of Heaven is a spiritual sensibility. As for those who are One with the Father .... they are already living stones built unto a spiritual Kingdom (as St. Peter would say):

Those who are blessed of the Father and heirs to the Kingdom, shall they now stand before God in judgment to detect variability? Such a premise denies God's perfect justice and unfailing mercy. For those in "whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning" (Jas 1:17), integrity is not at question.

I do not dispute the tollhouses. The saint for whom I am named described monks who had just drowned ascending in the air surrounded by angels and demons doing battle (Life of St. Columba). The only hope of these striving angels is the content of the monks' souls.

Reading the Gospel, the Letters, and the Revelation of St. John the Theologian, we are aware of two spiritual realities: the world in which we have no part for it holds no interest and the Kingdom of God in Whom we are always already sons and daughters. For those who are lukewarm, who sometimes run hot and sometimes cold, these are the ones for whom the Final Judgment has been prepared.

What shall we say of those who are lost to a world of cheap thrills? Their hope is to hear one crying in the wilderness and to hear the Lord he heralded: "Be transformed!" In our prayers this morning from the Lenten Triodion, the writer, after detailing his many faults, cries out, "O God, Who only art compassionate, turn me back!" .... and in so doing "save me."

Those who are washed clean of the past and who are transformed will discover a great irony: that the objects of their former desire no longer thrill them. Indeed, they will find that the "high life" to which they devoted their every hour is actually a "low life" whose memory haunts and humiliates them. But how could this be? Where did this illusion come from .... (and in time we realize) this swindle? The swindle was engineered by deception itself. He is called the deuce, the counterfeit, the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning (Jn 8:44). His illusions are always the same: thin tissues of nothing.

You know this. But it just here: the soft light, the transporting music .... I was carried along on a wave of pleasantness (after drinking this and smoking that). It was all right here .... I would stake my life to it. It is what I live for! And then, the next morning, waking up with a pounding headache and a trail of vomit, the harsh light of reality reveals that it was never there in the first place .... this life that so many devote themselves to.

Shall we call this a confidence game? The word confidence means "with faith." And faith turns out to be elemental in the spiritual journey. What we believe equates to faith. Belief and faith are synonyms. We may trust a constantly shifting scene of shadows and soft lights and false promises, or we may have rest unto our souls trusting the One in Whom there is no darkness at all.

If you rise each morning offering prayers of thanksgiving (Ps 100), if you thank the One Who lights your path with His commandments (Ps 119), if you live every moment in the companionship of angels (Ps 91), if you lie down each night upon your bed and do not sin (Ps 4), then please .... do not fret about the Last Judgment. Do you see the lack of proportion here? To do so would be an affront to Heaven, for it would question the promises of Christ and call into doubt the power of the life-giving Cross.

So let us steer clear of the last, great temptation — which would amount to a breach of sacred trust with God. Let us not call the power and love of God into question. But rather be of good cheer. Understand that every day lived in His sight is another step into His marvelous Kingdom. And above all, trust Him.