There are several common beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Among them is the notion of a Last Judgement. It is a Theme of both of today’s readings.

No major religion pretends to know when such a judgement will take place. That hasn’t stopped individuals or splinter groups from predicting the End. Every time there is a catastrophe in history, be it the plague, wars or collapse of civilization, there is always someone to say: this is it, the judgement is upon us.

We have a somewhat selfish idea that God is going to punish the wicked and reward the good. And we have definite ideas of who the wicked are and who the good are. Naturally, the one who predicts the punishment of the wicked does not include themselves in that category. It’s usually someone else who will be punished. And God will simply carry out our analysis.

Given that we live in a time of instantaneous news, we are bombarded with stories of tragic events literally on a daily basis: a bomb blows up an airplane with innocent people aboard; wars wage all around the world; crimes of unspeakable acts take place almost every hour of every day. This is food for those who seek to validate their theory that the end is near and the judge will impose the sentence for the verdict we have determined.

Yet nothing that is happening today hasn’t happened before, even more terrible. There is no Black Death wiping out a third of humanity; there are no world wars where hundreds of millions of people are being killed; there is no impending catastrophe that will wipe out the human species. These things would happen, of course and some of them have happened, but the world goes on. The earth spins in its orbit, the stars are in their heavens and life flows on. As it has been written, the sun shines on the wicked and the just with equal intensity.

Someday the whole universe will either expand indefinitely, the sun will no longer give light –but that’s billions of years away, long, long, after all of us are gone.

That said, there is the fact that each of us will be gone, or passed on as the euphemism says. It has long been understood that when that happens, God will judge us and sentence us either to eternal joy or eternal pain. That is, if God does what we want him to do.

Therein is the primary sin of humanity: to think that God acts like we do.

I personally do not want a jury of my peers deciding my eternal fate. They would be too fair and I would not escape their judgement. But it is God who will judge. I am not being naïve to even suggest that God is not a severe judge. The one missing element that God decides the fate of those whom he himself created is mercy. Mercy is not justice. And you will recall that this mass began with a three-fold prayer: Lord have mercy. In Greek, it’s not a request. It’s a statement, best translated as:

The lord has mercy.

Go Back