St. Mary Parish, Manchester at 210 West Main Street, Manchester, MI 48158 US - Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King (Nov. 23, 2008)

We have reached the last Sunday of the liturgical year and in the revised calendar it has been given the name the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. The Gospel for this feast presents to us the concluding moment of human history: Judgment Day. From the lips of Christ himself we are given a glimpse of that great and ominous day. It is a day that will come, not by chance or by accident but as part of the great plan of God. But before we reflect upon the return of Christ in glory I would like to speak briefly about last Sunday and how that Gospel forms a part of our judgment as well.

The Church teaches us that there are two judgments that every single human being will face. The first comes when the individual dies. At the moment of death the individual soul goes before the Lord and is judged by him. In the parable of the talents that was read last Sunday Jesus was teaching of the responsibility that each individual bears because of the gifts that have entrusted to their care. Every single one of us has been blessed with an immensity of gifts: spiritual, personal and material. We do well to frequently reflect upon these gifts, to recognize them and then to do something with them. The parable of the talents reminds us that because we have been given so much we are called to invest those gifts in order to bring forth spiritual wealth to build up the great treasury of God.

Brothers and sisters when we die, we will, each and every one of us, stand before the Lord and present to him our entire lives. On that day we must show him everything that we have done with what has been given to us. At the moment of our death what will we have to show God? Will we be able to show him that we took the gifts that he gave us and brought forth a great return? Or will be stand before him impoverished giving back to him all that we have been given without any effort made? Did we bury the gift of our faith and not share it with others it in order to advance God’s kingdom because we were afraid?

At the moment of our death no excuses will be accepted and no blame allowed to be thrust upon another for our lack of motivation or failures when it came to investing the gift of our faith in the world in order to draw others into the Church, the source of the world’s salvation.

There are two ways that we can approach this as is taught in the parable of the talents. We can rejoice at what we have been given, we can rejoice that God has come to save us in Christ and that through our baptism we have been given the promise of eternal life and then enthusiastically share this good news, this gift with others. Or we can allow ourselves to succumb to the temptation of the devil, we can give into fear, we can bury the gift of faith and live our lives as if God didn’t exist, giving him little to no thought. But in the end no one will be able to escape this Day of Judgment and to we who are Catholic, who have been given so much, much will be expected from us.

The second judgment that the Church teaches us about is the Last or General Judgment. This will come when Christ returns in glory and on that day every one who ever existed from Adam and Eve until the last human being that was conceived will come before the Christ. It is also on this day that the bodies of the dead will be reunited with their souls. The Last Judgment reminds us that God created man not to live in isolation but in relationship with others. God who created man in his image and likeness has called him to live as he lives in a communion of life and love.

It will not be until time ceases that the totality of the effect of our works of charity will be fully know as well as the totality of the effect of our sins of omission and commission. Both our works of charity as well as the effect of our sins is like dropping a pebble into a pool of water; they have a ripple effect that keeps going out and out and touching others well after we have died.

There is such a thing as generational sin, sin that gets passed on in families. The sins of fathers and mothers can be visited upon their children, and unless this pattern can be broken by the power of God’s grace each generation will pass it on to its own children and perpetuate its destructive path. It is only at the Last Judgment that the totality of this will be known and then seen by everyone.

It is interesting to note as is recorded in today’s Gospel that the lives of the righteous were so consumed with spending themselves for others, it had become so ingrained in their nature that when they stood before Christ seated upon the throne of judgment and were questioned by him it was clear that they were motivated out of sense of joy and enthusiasm for the talents, the gifts that had been given to them. In a way they were almost surprised that they were being rewarded. In many ways they had been experiencing great joy because they were imitating Christ in their everyday walk.

But notice the other group that stands before Christ at the Last Judgment. They were totally oblivious. They had lived their lives consumed with their own wants and needs. They lived for themselves. They had taken the talents entrusted to their care and tossed them aside and instead of living with their sights set on the kingdom of heaven, they instead built up their own little kingdoms. And when Christ asked them about why they were unable to see him in others and therefore had neglected to care for him in the least of their fellow brothers and sisters, they stood their perplexed, they didn’t have a clue about what Jesus was talking about.

The final word about the Last Judgment is that the bodies of the righteous will become like those of the risen Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary and they will live in the glory of the kingdom of heaven in their bodies and souls rejoicing for all eternity. Whereas after the Last Judgment the bodies of the unjust will remain in the state that they were resurrected. They will go into hell in their bodies and souls to experience its torments forever. They will live in eternity as they had lived on earth in selfishness and isolation.

My dear friends, may the feast that we celebrate today remind us of the gifts that we have been given by Christ which come to us through his holy Church. And may this feast serve as a catalyst for us to live our lives for others and motivate us to bring as many souls to him in this life as possible so that they too may know true joy in this life and share in the glory of heaven with Our Lord Jesus Christ the King for ever.

Amen.