Thoughts on the Last Judgment

When we depart this life our Catholic faith teaches us that we will be judged.  If we have not alienated ourselves irrevocably from the love of God, then before we enter heaven we must give the Lord an accounting of what we have done in the body, whether for good or for bad.  (See Romans 14:12)  Every Sunday we profess our faith and one of the elements of the creed we pray together is that the Lord Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead."  It's just as it is in this life: we are held accountable again and again, whether by tests in school, levels of achievement in athletics, benchmarks of accomplishment in the work place, growth into virtue or descent into vice, and so on.  So, when we die we will face the Lord in total honesty, with no excuses, nothing to hide behind, and no dodging the truth of what we did with the precious gift of life.  This judgment will be exercised by the Just Judge, who is full of mercy, and who came among us in the flesh not to condemn us but to save us.  The Judge we will face is absolute love, for in Him justice and peace have kissed.  He is forgiveness Itself, but He is also Truth itself, and does not call evil good or good evil.  In the clear light of eternity we will see ourselves through the eyes of the Lord who gave us a calling when we were created.  Seeing ourselves as He sees us will result in grief, but this kind of grief is that of the beatidue: "Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted."  The adjustment in seeing the raw truth of what we did with our life compared to what God was calling us to, again and again through all the years of our life, is part of the process that has been called purgatory.  In this process "we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is."  Becoming like God who is both love and justice involves an adjustment.  That adjustment, whatever it is like, contains the promise that this holy grief will be comforted, that heaven is straight ahead once the adjustment happens after realizing how we disappointed the One who loved us into existence and gave us our own unique calling.  The General Judgment, at the end of time, will include an awareness of what God called the whole human race to be, and how each of us participated in slowing down the advance of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Let us never forget that when our times comes to meet the Lord, we should be well prepared for that moment by doing all we can to die in the state of grace.  Requesting the Last Rites of the Church, being full of repentance for the sins of our lives, and trusting completely in the mercy of our forgiving Savior, all make up what is called the grace of a happy death.  It is also sweet indeed to be surrounded by the loves of our lives.