The Judgment

Thursday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Ps 130 (129):3‑4 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand? But with you is found forgiveness, O God of Israel.

Collect May your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Ephesians 1:1-10; Psalm 97; Luke 11:47-54

Jesus said to the experts in the law, Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, 'I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.' Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all. Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering. When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say. (Luke 11:47-54)

The Judgment Late in life John Henry Newman (beatified by Pope Benedict in September 2010) wrote in a letter to an acquaintance that the first principle of religion is the thought of a judgment as contained in the feeling of conscience. He meant two things here. Firstly, that in the feeling of guilt, so common and normal to man, there is an inkling of a judgment to come. Man is conscious of having done some wrong, and fears a future reckoning. Secondly, this thought of a judgment involves a dim perception of a Judge. It is a natural ground of religion, founded in the ordinary experience of the conscience. But of course, this religious sense is vague when grounded only on the moral instinct, and it can be easily ignored or explained away. The modern secular mind will not allow that the conscience involves the dim perception of an objective Lawgiver and Judge. Instead, it might allow that the conscience can recognize objective moral obligation, or more commonly, that its perceptions are but subjective personal tastes or persuasions. That is, it is just that you happen to think that this or that is wrong (because of your upbringing, environment, or genes), but there is no properly objective truth to your moral view. All this is to say that if religion were to be based on natural moral instincts alone, its basis would be uncertain indeed. Man needs Revelation. Nature, in fact, is oriented to what Revelation presents. The conscience of man supports what God has revealed. It disposes man to accept what God reveals of himself. What vitiates this, however, is that man is profoundly wounded by sin, and so his conscience is similarly wounded. Hence man can be found to be inimical to what God reveals. His best nature is oriented to Revelation, but sin can and does thwart this wholesome natural orientation to true religion. For instance, despite the intimations of the conscience that there is a judgment, God’s revelation of this fact is generally necessary if we are to be convinced of it.

In our Gospel today (Luke 11:47-54), our Lord confronts his determined opponents with the revelation of a judgment to come. The fact of a judgment should have been before them even on the ground of their natural conscience alone. They had the testimony of the Scriptures too. But our Lord expresses it in the plainest terms. God’s judgment is coming upon them. Time and again in the history of religion, it is the coming judgment of God which turns people away from sin and towards repentance. Our Lord is calling up powerful weapons in the hope that the hearts of his enemies will be changed. He bluntly accuses them of sin, and of being in the tradition of those who sinned in the past. “Jesus said to the experts in the law, Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.” Our Lord solemnly warns them, they will be brought to account. “Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.” But those to whom our Lord directed his solemn warnings took no heed. We have here a striking instance of the mystery of sin and of its power. When fully flourishing it is culpably blind and hateful towards God — and so we see the Pharisees (not all, though) and experts in the Law redoubling their efforts to oppose Jesus Christ. In this, they were unknowing agents of Satan. “When Jesus left there, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, waiting to catch him in something he might say.” What is it that might have saved them from their tragic course? What might have saved them was to have taken seriously the thought of a future judgment, intimated in the conscience and proclaimed in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Let us all take heed. Life is short, and eternity is very long. At the end of this very short life, there will be a solemn reckoning, and our eternity will be determined. Now is the time for change, for repentance, and for striving after goodness of life modelled on Jesus Christ and those who are closest to him. Nothing is more important than that we become good — holy in mind and heart. That is to say, we must put on the mind of Jesus Christ. This is the challenge and the task of every day. Let us not waste our time, but gain the one thing necessary.

(E.J.Tyler)

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A Second Reflection: (Ephesians 1:1-10)

Each of us is marvelously loved A very common feeling among people is that they do not matter much. This may be due to the way they have been treated during life, or perhaps due to the poor results of their work, or whatever. Many try by various means to bolster in themselves a feeling of self-worth, while others never have much of it. But what has been revealed is that from all eternity each of us is the object of God's special choice. God has "blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of heaven in Christ. Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence" (Ephesians 1:1-10).

So no matter who we are or what might be our work and its upshot, no matter what our circumstances, no matter who may or may not respect us, each of us has a divine vocation in Christ. Each of us is marvellously loved by God. We must allow this hidden invisible reality to fill our consciousness and shape every detail of our lives. It is the foundation of the quest for holiness. Holiness is God's ambition for us, so let us strive to make it our own.

(E.J.Tyler)

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