The Last Judgment
A sermon for the Sunday of the Dread Judgment
His winnowing shovel is in His hand, and He will thoroughly cleanse His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn, but the chaff He will burn up with unquenchable fire (Mt 3:12)
On this Sunday the Church calls to mind with the greatest reverence and compunction the Dread Judgment of Christ that is to come at the end of the age. The picture of that judgment has always filled with trembling, and still fills with trembling, not only sincere Christians and the saints, who finished the course of their life in a worthy manner, but all the Angels, the witnesses of our life. Before the eyes of all there will be revealed the unparalleled, awesome majesty of the very Creator and Lord and Savior of the human race, before whom the sun is as darkness, and the never-before-seen majesty and glory of the angels of heaven, who will be moved to come with their Lord to the universal judgment; all humanity will appear naked and exposed both before itself and before the eyes of all; each will see himself as he was and as he is; and each will stand there with the written book of his conscience, in which not a single iota will be concealed. Every thought, word, and deed will be laid bare as in the light of day; there will be no room left for contradiction or excuse. The final sentence of the righteous Judge will be pronounced for all eternity – for some full of every joy, for others terrifying and casting them into hopeless despair.
This judgment, spoken of clearly in many places of the Old and New Testaments, especially the New, in the unfailing words of the Lord Himself, of the prophets, of the Forerunner, and of the Apostles, is also demanded by the laws of human reason itself, to which there is an innate capacity to discuss everything, to weigh everything, to evaluate everything, to pass judgment on everything; it is demanded by our conscience, which has been given the delicate, innate capacity to distinguish good from evil, and the prompting to follow everything good, true, honorable, lofty, and holy, and to turn away from evil, from falsehood, from dishonesty, from what is low and sinful. The Dread Judgment is the last, final, dread manifestation, on the one hand, of the justice and mercy of God toward the righteous and those who have repented, and on the other, of the righteous, fearsome, unbearable wrath of God toward unbelievers and unrepentant sinners, who have used to evil all the gifts of His goodness and mercy, all His long-suffering.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about the dreadful Last Judgment over the ungodly, saying: See, the Lord is coming with myriads of His holy angels to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness in which they were ungodly, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against Him[1]. The holy prophet and king David prophesies in many psalms about God’s last, righteous judgment: For He is coming to judge the earth: He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with His truth[2]. The Christian peoples will be judged by the Gospel, according to how faithful and obedient or unfaithful and disobedient they were to it, while the unfaithful and the pagans will be judged by the law of conscience. For as many as sinned without the law will perish without the law: and as many as sinned in the law will be judged by the law[3]. Christians, and especially Orthodox Christians, who received all the means of grace for salvation and neglected them, will be subject to an especially dreadful punishment, greater than that of others who do not belong to the Orthodox faith and Church. For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God, says the Apostle, — and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who disobey the Gospel of God? And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear[4]? If with the green tree (Jesus Christ) God’s righteousness, the righteousness of the heavenly Father, acted so terribly, what will be done with the dry one[5]?
God’s righteousness will deal especially strictly with the founders of heresies, with schismatics, with sectarians, who distort the Gospel and teach contrary to Christ: If we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you other than what we preached to you, let him be anathema[6]. The Christian faith requires of us submission to its teaching, works of repentance, renewal, the wedding garment, purity and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord[7]; it requires the Spirit of Christ, a spirit of meekness, humility, simplicity, guilelessness, non-acquisitiveness, mercy.
Many Christians live like pagans, and worse than pagans: such are drunkards, adulterers, greedy grasping men, the rich who gather only for themselves and grow rich not toward God; proud despisers of their neighbors, possessed by envy, by a spirit of disobedience and self-will, who seem wise to themselves and prudent in their own sight[8]. All such, if they do not repent and amend, will be condemned to eternal torment. Thus the Dread Judgment will be the final manifestation of God’s righteousness and mercy toward the faithful and obedient, and—the manifestation of God’s terrible wrath toward the unfaithful, the adversaries of God and the scoffers at His righteous judgments: Or do you show no regard for the riches of His goodness and meekness and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance: But by your hardness and impenitent heart you are heaping up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God[9].
Let us hasten, then, brothers and sisters, to repentance, and let us diligently prepare for the day of the Dread Judgment of God, the final judgment that decides our fate for all eternity. Amen.