By Rev. F. X. McGowan OSA
THE SECOND COMING of Christ
There is probably no truth in the whole body of Christian doctrine that has excited more strongly the hopes and fears of humanity than the doctrine of the First and Second Coming of Jesus Christ on earth. His First Coming was eagerly watched for by His chosen people, and it was fraught with all the blessed confidence that the long night of four thousand years had fostered in men’s souls. When, however, it dawned upon a benighted world, it brought reprobation to the chosen people. It cast light upon outside nations, and it was weighted down with the grace of redemption to the Gentiles. Blindness in part hath happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in. (Romans 11:25)
Men have reason to fear that when their conduct shall be weighed in the scale
The Second Coming of Christ on earth bears with it a significance even as important as His First Coming. For men have reason to fear that when their conduct shall be weighed in the scale of Divine Justice, they will be held to a severe account and will incur the wrath of the Eternal Judge.
Ever since the days of Christ opposition has been manifested against the acceptance of the doctrine which teaches a future General Judgment. The carnal-minded children of the covenant could not brook such an idea because Jesus proclaimed Himself the Judge. The early heretics emulated the pagans in deriding what appeared to them as an impossible event. The same repugnance is to be found in our time. Men laugh to scorn the awful judgments of God.
We might classify the opponents of the doctrine of a General Judgment as “the proud infidel,” “the sensual epicurean,” and “the earthly materialist.”
The proud infidel is so self-sufficient that he will not admit a personal God, because he wants to deify his own intelligence; or if he does not exclude the idea of a God, he either identifies God with himself or makes God the universe around him. To the infidel the General Judgment is a fable, a myth.
The sensual epicurean is as equally opposed to a General Judgment as the self-willed infidel. His god is his belly, according to Saint Paul, and he lives simply to pander to passion and to satisfy appetite. He desires no General Judgment, because this lower life is his Elysium.
The earthly materialist is so wedded to the world and its interests that he cannot perceive anything beyond this life. He worships Mammon, and according to the Gospel, he cannot serve God. The materialist is in strong evidence in our American life. He never thinks of God and His judgments. His time is wholly occupied with gigantic speculations or with vast projects for self-aggrandizement. In practice, the materialist seems not to believe in a last accounting day when Christ shall judge the hearts of men.
God in His goodness has preserved the knowledge of Judgment Day in the deposit of faith which He bequeathed to His spouse, Mother Church. His revelation lives and throbs in Catholic hearts despite the infidelity of men and the perversity of nations. Let us glance at the certainty of a General Judgment, the reason of a General Judgment.
We say in the Apostles’ Creed we confess the event of Judgment Day, on which Jesus Christ shall judge the living and the dead. In the Nicene Creed we acknowledge that Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. In the Athanasian Creed we say: At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies and shall give an account of their own works.
The certainty of a General Judgment is proved: 1. From the Law of Nature; 2. From the Old Testament; 3. From the New Testament. That there will be at the end of time a General Judgment over which Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, will preside was well known from the earliest ages. The judgment, with its awful sentence, pronounced in Eden, was a type and a reminder of the day of the Lord when all nations and the world of all ages shall be summoned before the tribunal of Christ. This truth is indicated in many passages of the Old Testament, but these were badly understood or entirely ignored by the chosen people. A full knowledge of what both patriarch and prophet meant in their deliverances on this subject was reserved for the Christianity of later days. Before the Written Law was given to Israel, the patriarchs both saw in spirit and taught in word the event of the universal judgment. It was announced by the patriarch Enoch, the seventh from Adam: “Behold,” he said, “behold the Lord coming with thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things, which ungodly sinners have spoken against God.” Here direct reference is made not only to the Lord’s judgment, but also to the majesty and pomp which will attend it. Job, who was a Gentile, and who lived in the period between Abraham and Moses, thus being altogether uninfluenced by the legislation of the latter, testifies also to the universal judgment of the Lord. What shall I do when God shall rise to judge? and when He shall examine, what I shall answer Him? (Job 31:14) Again he says: Who will grant me this that thou mayst protect me in hell, and hide me till thy wrath pass? (Job 14:13)
The judgement... pronounced in Eden, was a type and a reminder of the day of the Lord when all nations and the world of all ages shall be summoned before the tribunal of Christ.
We see that before the Written Law had been promulgated, the knowledge of the Day of Judgment was apparent among the peoples of the earth. It may have had a connection with the spiritual promise of the Messias. The patriarchs certainly knew of it, and we shall see how later the prophets spoke of it in terms that are distinct and even elaborate.
The testimonies relative to the General Judgment are numerous in the Old Testament, and therefore we are permitted the liberty of selection. In the spirit of prophecy Anna, the mother of Samuel said: The adversaries of the Lord shall fear Him, and upon them shall be thunder in the heavens: the Lord shall judge the ends of the earth, and He shall give empire to His king, and shall exalt the horn of His Christ. (1 Kings 2:10) Here we have a direct allusion to the Judgment Day of the Lord, with its fear and trembling and exaltation of Jesus Christ, Who shall triumph over His enemies in the majestic environment of the day of His justice. Isaias, whose language and style are most elevated, also paints in glowing colors the dreaded conditions of Judgment Day: Enter thou into the rock, and hide thee in the pit from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of His majesty. The lofty eyes of man are humbled… and the Lord alone shall be exalted on that day. Because the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and high-minded, and upon every one that is arrogant, and he shall be humbled. (Isaias 2: 10-13) Again, this prophet calls the day of the Lord a cruel day, and full of indignation and of wrath and fury, to lay the land desolate and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it. (Isaias 13:9)
The prophet Ezekiel foretells the harrowing scene of the universal judgment: The end is come, the end is come upon the four quarters of the land… I will send My wrath upon thee, and I will judge thee according to thy ways; and I will set all thy abominations against thee. (Ezechiel 7: 2,3) The prophets Joel (Chapter 2), Malachias (Chapter 3), and the wise man (Wisdom 1:5) make use of similar language; they portray Judgment Day as a day full of anguish; they call it a day of wrath, of distress, of sorrow and pining, a day of darkness, on which, as it was shown to Daniel in a vision, the four kingdoms typified by the four animals shall be destroyed, wiped out in a solemn manner, and transferred to the saints of the Most High, who will reign forever and who will command the homage of all earthly kings. (Daniel 7)
This truth revealed to the patriarchs in the law of nature and to the prophets in the written law has been communicated to us in the law of grace by Our Blessed Saviour Himself. He has particularized the meaning of this important event. He spoke to unwilling ears when He announced the day of His Second Coming to judge mankind; the Jews willfully misunderstood Him and they maliciously corrupted Scripture to persevere in their blindness. We who have been born of the New Covenant acknowledge Jesus Christ to be the true God and true man, and we know that though Heaven and earth may pass away, His words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:35) The Son of man, He declares, shall come in the glory of His Father with His Angels: and then will He render to every man according to his works. (Matthew 16:27) Again, He warns us: Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in Heaven: and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of Heaven with much power and majesty. (Matthew 24:30) What a solemn, impressive spectacle! When the Son of man shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the seat of His majesty: and all nations shall be gathered together before Him, and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:31-32) We may not know the exact day when the Lord shall come to judge mankind, but we know the issue of that day: the Lord will call His elect to everlasting happiness, and He will send unhappy reprobates to never-ending misery.
...and then will He render to every man according to his works.
God does not demand of us that we serve, love, and obey Him without giving us forcible reasons for so doing. The holy Fathers give many reasons for the necessity of a General Judgment. We select four principal ones that will enlighten us as to God’s dispensation regarding this solemn event.
- One of the reasons given by the Fathers of the Church for the General Judgment is to show with what justice Jesus Christ rewards the good and punishes the wicked in the Particular Judgment. We may remark here that the Saviour is in no way bound to justify His conduct before His subjects. He is master absolute, and we are in His hands, as says the Apostle, like clay in the potter’s hands. (Romans 9: 21) It is only through pure condescension on His part that He will make known to us the motives that have led Him to pronounce sentence on mortals as He has done. He will expose these reasons in such a just and intelligent way that the reprobate will acknowledge the justice of their condemnation. He will convince all that He has not wounded justice in the punishment of the wicked, nor overpassed the limit of equitable generosity in the reward of the righteous.
Another reason for the General Judgment is to make known the means of salvation which have been offered to every one of us in particular, and the manner in which we have employed them. Let us look over our past lives and consider the graces which we have received: graces which were common to the parish in which we lived, graces which were entirely personal, given solely for our benefit. Review in thought the sermons and instruction to which we have listened and the salutary counsel which we have received from God’s ministers in the tribunal of Penance; Think how often conscience has upbraided us and placed before our frightened gaze the picture of unrepentant death, and how often, too, we were so moved that we cried out: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (II Corinthians 6:2) God has threatened, caressed, invited, urged, implored, and chastised us. The Day of Judgment will disclose our indifference towards grace, our actual abuse of grace, and even our rejection of grace.
- A further reason for a General Judgment is to make a solemn reparation to souls unjustly oppressed and a solemn proclamation of the good works of the righteous. On earth, the good are mingled with the wicked, and their good deeds, for many causes are never viewed in an impartial light. They are persecuted by the wicked, and the latter seem to prosper while the former endure adversity. God will right all these wrongs on Judgment Day, and the wicked who received their reward on earth will be banished from the kingdom of Heaven, while the good shall have as their eternal portion happiness without end.
Let us anticipate this “great day of the Lord” by treasuring up merit in heaven.
- 4. The fourth reason we adduce for the holding of the Last Judgment is to confound the reprobate with their sins and crimes. What will be the confusion of the wicked when they shall see that they could have merited felicity, but lost it by deliberate, willful malice and deception! All their sins will be disclosed; and their hypocrisy, deceit, and rashness laid bare as clear as the noontide’s sun.
Let us anticipate this “great day of the Lord” by treasuring up merit in Heaven. The judgment of God is a terrible thought. It has frightened even the saintliest souls. Saint Jerome could do nothing—work, write, or pray—without imagining that he heard the voice of the trumpet and the angel saying, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.” Saint Augustine confessed that it was the fear of God’s judgment that deterred him from committing many sins.