When the Son of Man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him,
he will sit upon his glorious throne,
and all the nations will be assembled before him.
We confess in the creed that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But aside from Sundays and solemnities when we say the creed we don't tend to think too much about judgment on the last day. This is not to say we have no concern to follow Jesus or to pursue holiness. We may even manage to make regular examinations of conscience and frequently make use of the sacrament of confession without thinking about the reality of the coming judgment. But it seemed that Jesus wanted his disciples to keep the last judgment in mind as a horizon against which they lived their lives day to day. Why would he reveal the criteria of the last judgment if not because he wanted us to be numbered among the sheep on his right hand?
Then the king will say to those on his right,
‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father.
Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
The last day will make manifest the way we have lived our lives. If we have lived in love then we will be recognized by Jesus and will recognize him. By our treatment of the least of his brothers we will have already demonstrated the degree of love we have for Jesus himself. As John wrote, "he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen" (see First John 4:20). Since there is nothing that God needs from us and nothing that we can do that will accrue benefit to him he has chosen to associate with the lowest and the least so that we can demonstrate our love for him in a way that has meaning and impact in the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me drink,
a stranger and you welcomed me,
naked and you clothed me,
ill and you cared for me,
in prison and you visited me.’
If it were really Jesus who crossed our path and not those on the peripheries of our society and the outcasts of our day it seems certain to us that the magnitude of our response would be much greater. If we saw Jesus hungry and thirsty we would certainly do everything in our power to feed him and quench his thirst. But he has told us where he may be found. Yet we are slow to believe him, preoccupied with our own splendor, like the rich man who ignored Lazarus at his doorstep. It is true that the problem of poverty is so overwhelming as to be intractable. But we are not called to solve all of the problems of the world. Rather, we are called to make a difference in the lives of individuals by using the blessings given to us by God for their sake.
Then he will say to those on his left,
‘Depart from me, you accursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
a stranger and you gave me no welcome,
naked and you gave me no clothing,
ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’
The sins that damned the goats were sins of omission. That is, they were given the opportunity to perform these deeds of love, people in need came across their paths, and they chose to do nothing, to prefer themselves, and to harden their hearts. The Lord did not necessarily ask them to travel to distant lands or to reform the political order. More often, he asked them to respond where he planted them using the graces he himself provided. There is a fearful prospect here, that without an examination of conscience we might be like these goats and be unaware of the failure of our response. We are called to keep this judgment before our eyes to ensure that we are never the ones that say, "Lord, when did we see you", as an excuse for our inaction.
The Lord desires to make us fit for heaven by teaching us to live lives of love. The life of heaven is nothing other than the love between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By responding to this parable we can signal whether or not that is really what we desire for all eternity. May we love our neighbor as ourselves so that on the last day we too may hear, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world".
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