[AI translation] The last time we spoke of Jesus, who was present on this earth 2000 years ago in his bodily reality, then present now in the invisible reality of his Spirit - he will appear again on the last day, but then as one who will step out of the cloud of invisibility, out of his divine incognito. That is, He will be seen in His full, dazzling, stunning divinity by men, by those who waited and those who did not wait, by those who believed and those who denied, by those who loved and those who did not love! Thus says Jesus Himself, "They shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory..." And he goes on to say, "And then shall all the families of the earth weep..." Because the big question now is, who is weeping for what? Is it in the pain of belated regret, or in the grateful joy of the reward of faithfulness?! And then it will be that every knee will bow to Jesus and every tongue will confess Him as Lord. The only great difference will be that one will worship the Lord of all with the compulsion of despair and the other with the exultation of arrival at the goal! So this last, great, visible appearance of Him will also bring with it the great, final judgment... Thus we also confess in the Apostles' Creed: "From thence shall come to judge the living and the dead." It is of this final, great judgment that the Scripture we have read speaks, and on the basis of this, let us now try to see the future as a judgment!The word "judgment" has taken on a dark, threatening ring in the last two millennia, unfortunately! Think, for example, of the famous medieval hymn "Dies irae dies illa", which many famous composers have captured in the language of music in a way that almost shudders the soul - and which also sounds so terrifying in our current hymnal:
"Comes the day of wrath with flame,
will end the evil world,
That will shake the dead and the living,
When the condemned comes,
who will take account of every deed..."
And who would not know Michelangelo's famous Last Judgement on the back wall of the Sistine Chapel: in the centre, Jesus, the angry judge, turns with a harsh, repulsive gesture towards the condemned, who lie at his feet with faces contorted in despair. And the martyrs who surround the figure of Christ almost urge him to take vengeance on them! And Mary turns away in horror from the horrible scene! Is this really how we should imagine this final, great judgment?
Well: no! I say most emphatically: no! The judgment we are expecting in the future is primarily evangelical. And you know that the gospel is good news, good news from God. The word judgment itself, in both the Old and New Testaments, does not so much mean a legal act of reward and punishment, a judicial act, but rather the restoration of the divine order which has been disrupted by sin. So judgment means divine justice in the sense that God does justice to all those who have been wronged here in some grievous injustice, vindicates the rights of those who have suffered some wrong, gives eternal consolation to those who have suffered in some way because of the wickedness of others. In short, he restores the order of law and justice which here on earth is again and again violated and overturned by sin. There will be fulfilled what Jesus promised here, that the poor are blessed, behold, the kingdom of heaven is theirs; - blessed are they that weep, behold, they shall be comforted; - blessed are the meek, behold, they shall inherit all things; - blessed are the merciful, behold, they shall have mercy for ever; - blessed are they that suffer for righteousness' sake, behold, the kingdom of heaven is theirs indeed... Then shall all be truly happy who have believed, endured, suffered, been spared, loved, sacrificed, for behold, it shall be revealed once and for all that they were right, that they were right in spite of all appearances! Divine justice vindicates them!
With that final, great, glorious appearance of Jesus, God is revealed, it is seen that God is indeed the God of justice, of peace, of joy, of love, of purity, of mercy, and behold, all of these, in whose works something of God's justice, peace, joyful love, merciful goodness has shone through, Jesus draws them like a mighty spiritual magnet into His heavenly glory as belonging to Him. He who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, visited the sick, comforted the afflicted, took in the homeless, clothed the unclothed - in other words, those whose attitude towards their fellow human beings already had this Jesus-like spirit, this Christ-like compassionate love, already lived and worked: they will inherit that kingdom, that is, they will be part of the world in which eternal Love, Eternal Peace, Eternal Goodness: Jesus, God, reigns! But it naturally follows that those who were strangers to the Jesuit spirit of compassion and charity for the poor, who were alien or unfamiliar with this Christian attitude, would be repelled by the same powerful spiritual magnet as alien elements... What would those be seeking in the world of His merciful love who have always been alien to it?!
Well, then, who will be drawn to Himself and who will be repelled by the same eternal merciful Love: this will be revealed at the judgment when this eternal Love will appear in all its divine glory. That is why Paul says on one occasion that we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ! To appear does not only mean, in the original sense of the text, to stand before it, but much more. In the true sense of the word, it means that there, before the judgment seat of Christ, we will all be truly known, our true selves will be revealed, our innermost selves, our innermost essence will be revealed, our true selves will be revealed, our true selves will be revealed... For now none of us show ourselves or appear to be what we really are. For now we can deceive the world, and even ourselves, with appearances. But there, all pretense, all disguise, all pretense, all pretense falls away and we stand before Christ in our nakedness. There it will be finally and irrevocably revealed what was right and what was wrong, what was true and what was false - even what we did not know will be revealed. "Lord, when would we have seen you hungry and fed you - or not fed you?" We will be astonished to see that we didn't know when we had done something good for someone, or when we hadn't done something good for someone! There we will discover even the thoughts of our hearts, even our most guarded secrets. There it will be obvious that there is no secret that cannot be revealed! There it will be revealed what lies behind a kind, friendly face. It is there that the great and final separation between the wheat and the tares, which are often so unrecognisably mixed together... Yes: it is part of the judgment, this great unveiling, this "appearance" before Christ!
But even here, the consolation of the Gospel comes first, because the glorious appearance of the Christ will unveil our true, naked self, who here on earth first stood before the judgment seat of God for me and took away all condemnation from me... I somehow think, then, that it is there that a man will know what the forgiveness of his sins has meant to him, because it is there that all his sins, all his secrets, will be revealed in their true reality, even those of which he was unaware... But in the same way: it is there that the other person will know what it means for him not to accept the forgiveness offered, not to take it seriously, because it is there that he will see all his sins, his secrets, in their terrible reality, even the ones he did not know! So that judgment can be not only an acquittal but also a condemnation. Just as a magnet not only attracts but also repels. The mighty One before whom all the nations will gather will not only say, "Come, my Father's elect..." but also, "Depart from me!"
So in that judgment there is not only salvation, but also damnation. But let us be careful here, because the concept of damnation and hell has been abused a lot over the millennia. Many people want to maintain hell for those they do not love, for those they are angry with, for those they suffer. Even an ancient church father, Tertullian, consoled persecuted Christian churches by telling them not to fear that they would soon see their persecutors burn in hell. And certainly Christian art did not do a good service with its sensual depictions of hell as it was often imagined: blazing fires, devils with horses' feet, fiery forks, men writhing in agony... The New Testament does speak of hell, but some preliminary remarks should be noted whenever it is mentioned:
1) It never speaks of it as a specific place, but always as a specific state. Neither does gyehenna mean the place of hell: Valley of Hinnom, on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, where damnable pagan child sacrifices were performed in the second century B.C. and where Jews believed a sea of flames would consume those who participated in the impious ritual at the judgment.) In the mouth of Jesus, therefore, it is already a symbolic expression. Even more symbolic are words like fire, eternal fire, wrath, outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth. The symbolic nature of all these terms is evident from the fact that fire and outer darkness are simply mutually exclusive, if we were to interpret them literally... So these expressions are meant to convey a state of damnation.
If you have ever felt something of the gnawing fire of your conscience, if you have ever thought, gnashing your teeth and weeping, of an omission which can no longer be atoned for, if you have ever seen what agony, what hellish torment, some sin of yours has caused either to yourself or to others: then, in the infinite perspective of this painful experience, think of damnation, and you can already have some idea of the direction in which hell may be! Only now there is deliverance from the irredeemable sin and the stifling fires of conscience: through the blood of Jesus, which covers all sin, atonement is made - but there, beyond the judgment, there is none but the pain of helpless repentance. Yes, it is in that very damnation that man is forced, weeping and gnashing his teeth, to look back on what he has wasted and gambled away in this earthly life. Damnation means that there is no future, but only a fruitless reminiscence of missed opportunities, a gnawing agony for not having wanted to understand the meaning of life. I think this is what Jesus meant by these words, "Where their worm does not die and their fire does not fall asleep." (Mk 9,48)
2) Then another remark about hell and damnation is that Jesus and the apostles never speak about it in an informative way, that is, never as a separate subject, what hell is, what hell is like, where hell is, but always in a warning way: that is, that this is what God does not want, from which Jesus redeemed us. This is what the awful reflection of which was reflected on the face of our Saviour, when in the Garden of Gethsemane He was so hellishly tormented that He sweated blood - being in the agony of death - and this is what He suffered for us and for our sake. For that is why he agonized so "ungodly". Hell and damnation are always a dark background to the free grace and forgiveness of sins offered in Jesus. It proclaims the love of God that you should see, people, what God wants to deliver you from! Because God does not want to reject anyone! But God wants to save everyone! Hell and damnation only underline, as if urgently, the deadly seriousness of accepting the grace offered in Jesus! So even in the proclamation of hell, the gospel is preached: Look, this is what God wants to save us from! From that helpless self-blame, that helpless, fruitless, past-bound, irredeemable self-blame, its gnashing pain, its fire, its darkness... So all hell is an exhortation not to delay the decision! You can still reach out to Jesus, in whom God offers you salvation, eternal life, the fullness of your life! Look: on the cross, in that terrible abandonment of God, Jesus bore for you all the horrors of rejection. This is true, but only to the extent that you accept it by faith! So take hold of God's saving hand in Jesus while you still can, for now you can! God wants to save you too! The only question is, do you want it?!
3) Because one more remark about hell: Jesus never speaks of it as the final state of people who are unaware of the divine grace that has appeared in Him, but always as an opportunity into which a person can enter who has met Jesus but has refused the salvation offered in Him in any way: whether secretly or openly, whether out of indifference or hostility, whether in his anti-Christian or ecclesiastical behaviour! - So: God never condemns anyone to damnation, to hell, but we ourselves can condemn ourselves to it! At that last, great judgment, it will only be revealed who has chosen what, it will only be revealed who has sown what, because that is what he will reap. Hell, then, is only the direct consequence of the decision that is made here and now in the soul of a man, in your life too. Hell does not fall upon a man like a devastating bomb, but ripens as the fruit of a whole life. Do you know who will be there in hell? Those to whom God, after many patient, loving calls, finally says, "Thy will be done".
Let me end with one of the most wonderful, most powerful promises of Jesus: 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life! And shall not go into condemnation, but shall pass from death unto life! Verily, verily, I say unto you, the time is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the word of the Son of God, and they that hear shall LIVE" (John 5:24-25)
The sound of the horn is already dying,
The dawn is breaking, The angels are on their way.
My life is but the palm of my hand,
And Jesus will hold me to account if I die.
Teach me, Lord, that my death
And never forget my short life,
And the life to come,
Judgment from my heart.
(Canto 366, verses 4 and 5)
Amen.
Date: 17 November 1968 Evangelization