31st Sunday Year C - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2019

All Saints Day, All Souls Day, even the month of November, can set us wondering about the fate of our deceased loved ones, and of the dead generally, wondering too about our own ultimate destiny. We do not have too much to go on, in fact – so our imaginations have scope to run riot, and have too often tended to let us down. Some things we know. We know that God loves us – but our understanding of love, divine love, even at its most noble, is hopelessly incomplete. Did you hear what the Book of Wisdom, that we heard read as today’s First Reading, had to say of God, “You love all that exists … for had you hated anything, you would not have formed it… How, had you not willed it, could a thing persist? You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life.”

And yet we have as well the sound tradition of the eventual coming of the “Day of the Lord”, what we also refer to as the General Judgment, when “we shall all be gathered around him”, as Paul expressed it in today’s Second Reading.

So there seem to be two dimensions. We shall be with God. But we shall not be alone – we shall be with each other – for eternity. And we look forward to both. Or do we? If being “gathered around Christ” is our destiny, eternal life will be a community experience. It will be about relationships, about the quality of our relationships.

Yet we all die with an enormous debt of love undeveloped, of 'unfinished business' – of forgiveness not offered, of sorrow withheld, of gratitude not expressed. In our hearts, though we usually avoid facing the issues, we know that offering heart-felt forgiveness and expressing true sorrow ask of us nothing less than metaphorical death. Jesus advised us as much. We need to “die to ourselves” as a condition of life. In order to enjoy eternal life, we shall need to be free of all concerns, and to feel free, totally free. And this, I think, is where the General Judgment comes in.

Usually we think of judgment in terms of retribution or punishment or legal judgment. Probably because we are not too familiar, unfortunately, with what is called restorative justice – [though it has become a little more common in the juvenile justice system, and through the Truth and Justice Commissions of South Africa and, nearer home, of East Timor.]

God, “the lover of life”, is not interested in our being punished. God offers us forgiveness, and wants us to experience reconciliation with each other, based on truth, on forgiveness and sorrow. God’s justice is not punitive justice, but restorative justice.

Consequently, at the General Judgment the lives of everyone will, I expect, be laid totally bare to everyone. We shall see clearly all those who have hurt us in any way. We shall also see clearly all the hurt that we have caused to others. Since we can never be truly free until we have offered gratuitous forgiveness to those who have hurt us, to all of them, and until we have genuinely expressed our sorrow and repentance to all those we have hurt, we shall, I hope, have the opportunity freely to both forgive totally and to express our deepest sorrow. As well, since our relationships will fall short, and our joy will never be complete until we have said “thank you” to all who have been good to us, in whatever way, and until we have heard and accepted “thank you” from all those to whom we have been good, we shall, I trust, know the delight of doing precisely both. General judgment will be the eventual celebration of the 'finished business' of life.

And we still have to explore the unimaginable wonder of gazing face to face at the infinite mystery of love whom we call God.