Today the Church celebrates the feast of Christ the King — it’s the last Sunday in Ordinary Time and the very end of the Liturgical Year, so it’s a fitting Sunday to finish our series on the Last Things. We’ve already covered Death, Heaven and Hell — so the last remaining Last Thing to address is, of course… Judgment.

Judgment Day is in fact coming for each of us, and no… I’m not talking about Terminator 2. I’m talking about that experience of coming face to face with Jesus Christ the King, and having to then render an account of our entire life, start to finish: 

This will happen first at our own Particular Judgment… when we die, we will immediately come into the throne-room of God for Him to pass immediate judgment on our own soul… But secondly, this will also happen at the Last Judgment — or the ‘General Judgment’ — which takes place at the very end of time, at Christ’s Second Coming, when everything will be revealed and our own Particular Judgment will be on full display for everyone else to see.

There is no escaping this future of glory or shame… This great triumph and reward… or this utter shame and disgrace.

That day is inevitably coming.

Every Sunday, when we stand together to proclaim the Nicene Creed, we profess our belief that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”

St. Paul tells us point blank that one day “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”

Elsewhere, Scripture says that the Father “has given all judgment to his Son.”

Jesus is KING of the Universe, and the king’s judgment is final. Nobody can veto His royal ruling. The buck stops with Him. There’s no arguing or disputing! There’s no court of appeals… 

When we die, Jesus will either say to us: 

‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.” … Or, he will say to us: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

And really… if you think about it…. it makes perfect sense why Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, should be our judge — because when the Father sent him down into the world, not to condemn the world but in order to SAVE IT… we unfortunately chose to judge him! 

Imagine that! 

We actually put Jesus on trial! 

The perfect God-made-man, the Alpha and the Omega… the Final Judge Himself who will come amid the clouds on the Last Day…was judged by sinners!!!

It’s almost laughable, and yet Jesus permitted all of this to happen to Him.

In our Gospel today, we get a little window into this trial of the Divine Judge… the “Greatest Trial of History” as Archbishop Fulton Sheen once called it… 

Pontus Pilate asks Jesus very bluntly: “Are you the King of the Jews?” 

And Jesus replies with another question: “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?”

Pilate responds: “I am not a Jew, am I?  Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”

Pilate is basically saying… “You’re the one on trial here, Jesus! You’re being judged, Jesus, not me!!! What did you do?? Do you not know that I have power to release you and I have power to crucify you? Do you not know that I have power to pronounce JUDGMENT over you???”

Pontus Pilate and the Jewish leaders of the day carried out this trial… but really, it was all of us.

We all put God on trial that day…

And what’s worse… We found him guilty. 

“Crucify him! Crucify him,” we called out. “We have no king but Caesar!”

All of humanity put God on trial, judged Him very harshly, and when the verdict came in, we said: “GUILTY.”

And so we put Him to death. Christ the King mounted His Throne…He was nailed to His Cross and died there… judged and executed for being the Innocent One, the Messiah, the Suffering Servant… An otherworldly King…

Because if his Kingdom was of this world… then his subjects “would have fought to keep Him from being handed over,” but as it is, His Kingdom “was NOT of this world.”

We judged Jesus… so… it’s only fair that He now judges us. 

And thankfully, He is a merciful judge. He is a good Judge.

His Judgment is true. His Judgment is final.

We all know that the judges of this fallen world are subject to various kinds of corruption and temptation — they can fall prey to bribery, favoritism, and all sorts of political manipulation… Even the best, most morally disciplined judges sometimes make honest mistakes. Sometimes they rule that someone is guilty when they are actually innocent… or innocent when they are really guilty! Sometimes worldly judges are even prevented from making the right ruling because all the facts aren’t available…important evidence is missing. Or the laws themselves are imperfect.

But Jesus has none of these limitations. 

He is a fully human judge BUT he is also fully divine. He is OMNISCIENT… ALL-KNOWING…And therefore, He is the PERFECT Judge. “I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” 

He knows everything about our life — the good, the bad, and the ugly. As Jesus himself told us: “There is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” 

He knows our every thought, every word, every action, every glance, every online comment! He perfectly understands all extenuating circumstances, all the true motives of our hearts, all the deepest desires and intentions… He knows our hidden virtues as well. He takes into account our wounds, our habits, our predispositions. He knows all of our hang-ups and weaknesses. He hears the desperate final act of contrition of the most hardened sinner, the most broken soul…

There’s that beautiful story of when a distraught widow came to St John Vianney after her husband committed suicide. She begged him to tell her whether there was any hope for her husband. And St John Vianney reportedly told her:

“Between the bridge and the water he repented!”

And so he sent this woman away filled with hope — telling her to go and pray for the purification and repose of her husband’s soul.

This all leads us to say, as the Scriptures make clear, that “God does not see as a mortal, who sees the appearance. The Lord looks into the heart.” 

The perfect gaze of King Jesus pierces all the way through us — Nothing is surprising to Him. No stone is left unturned. No piece of evidence is missing… 

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world,” he says, “to testify to the truth.”

…To the cold, hard, naked TRUTH of our souls as they REALLY are…

And this can either play to our favor… or to our demise… 

Some people at first will look pretty great… on the surface they may seem so holy… so good… almost perfect! … but really they are dead inside:  They “are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.”

On the other hand… some people might appear kind of problematic, unsavory, or even morally compromised… we might be tempted to brush them off as hopelessly messed up… irredeemable… but God can see that they are doing the best they can with what they’re working with. 

And so… “Judge not, lest you be judged!”  “For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”

Only the Lord can see the heart.

Not us…

That famous Gospel story of the tax collector and the Pharisee comes to mind here… the Pharisee stands up to pray in the temple, thanking God that he is not greedy, dishonest and adulterous… like that TAX COLLECTOR over there in the corner! 

Meanwhile, the tax collector, repents, praying with a sincere heart: “Oh God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I wonder what will happen on Judgment Day for these two?

I hope and pray we are all like that tax collector. I hope and pray that none of us begins to recite a litany of self-congratulation and self-defense like the Pharisee did. 

But I hear that sort of thing all the time:

“Well, Father…I’m a good person! After all, I didn’t kill anybody, Lord! I paid my taxes! I went to Church every Sunday… At least I wasn’t like all those other people who were really bad… really evil. At least I wasn’t HITLER!!!”

God forbid we start doing that…  Because that sort of posture, I’m afraid, is the absolute worst way to approach the Throne of God. 

Why?

Because it’s relying on ourselves… 

It’s pride. 

It’s self-justification.

On Judgment Day, our ONLY real defense… will be the Blood of Jesus.

We have no other reason to hope for Heaven. Period.

And so while we have time left in this life… all we can do is repent. All we can do is confess our sins sincerely and thoroughly… so that on that day, we can point to the Blood poured out on the Cross and say to our Good, Merciful Judge: “That’s my defense. That is my only hope.”

A good examination of conscience can help with this.

An examination of conscience operates sort of like a pre-final judgment… It’s a list of very pointed questions that we ask ourselves, so that we can expose everything to the Just Judge in the Tribunal of Mercy, aka… in the Sacrament of Confession. 

We ask questions like: “Have I prayed every day? Have I attended Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation? Have I been lazy, selfish, greedy, gossipy, lustful? Have I been respectful to my parents? Have I loved my neighbor as myself? Have I loved God above everything else?”

…St. John of the Cross famously said: “In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.”

Have we truly loved God? Have we truly loved our neighbor?

As we ask ourselves all these questions in prayer, what we’re basically trying to do is what God will do on Judgment Day! …We are looking at the honest state of our soul. We are asking the Holy Spirit to come and convict us of our real, actual sins.

When we do this… when we consistently make good, thorough confessions with true contrition of heart… then we should have nothing to fear on judgment day.

Because we will have absolutely nothing to hide. We will be fully surrendered to the Lord and therefore… free.

There’s a story from the life of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who received visions of Jesus and His Sacred Heart in the 1600’s in France — And at some point, her spiritual director wanted some proof of these visions she was having: So he instructed her to ask God to reveal to her the last sin that he confessed in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. And Margaret Mary agreed to do so.

During their next meeting, her spiritual director asked: “Has Jesus appeared to you again?”

“He has,” she said.

“Did you ask what my last confessed mortal sin was?”

“I did” she replied.

“And what did He tell you, Sister?”

“He said to me, ‘I have forgotten.”

Jesus forgot the sins that this priest already sincerely confessed.

And I don’t know about you, but that’s what I want to experience on Judgment Day. I want to stand before the all-good, all-merciful, all-holy, all-knowing Judge … King Jesus in ALL of His GLORY… and I want Him to say that He has already forgotten and already forgiven ALL of my sins.

I don’t want anything to stand between Him and me.

So… I encourage you: Go to Confession soon. Go, sometime during this upcoming season of Advent.

King Jesus is waiting for you there. He is a good and merciful Judge. He already knows your sins… So you might as well be totally forgiven of them before Judgment Day. We know neither the day, nor the hour. (WWIII?) Be ready. Be ready to meet Christ the King!