Judgement Day

There was a 4^th century Saint; - Ephrem who preached about Judgement Day as if it were unfolding before his eyes. He wept as he delivered it, paused to regain composure and continued, such a poignant moment it will be for us all and worth keeping before our own eyes:- 

“The King of kings will descend from heaven, from the throne of glory, to take His seat as Judge, and will call all the inhabitants of earth before His judgment-seat. Alas! a clap of thunder makes us tremble now; how then shall we bear the clang of those trumpets which shall wake the dead? As soon as the sleeping bodies in the bosom of the grave shall hear this sound, life will animate them once more.” 

All will rise again in one and the same moment, without a single hair being wanting to them ; they will collect together and stream towards the place of judgment ; for the heavenly King issues His commands, and the stricken earth and the agitated depths of ocean give back their dead; Then he described the fire which enkindles the whole world ; the angels who separate the sheep from the goats ; the sign of the Cross shining with light, which is carried before the King ; man kind in fear and confusion ; the just overflowing with joy, and the wicked a prey to despair ; the heavenly hosts glorifying the thrice holy God with their songs of praise ; heaven opened, and the Lord surrounded by such glory that neither heaven nor earth can support it. 

Ephrem then unfolded before their eyes the Book of Life in which all our thoughts, words, and works are written. Then each man will be called up to undergo a severe examination, and will not dare to lift up his eyes to the Eternal Judge, whose divinely just decree awards to each one life or death, heaven or hell. my dearest brethren! how many tears ought we not to shed day and night in expectation of this fearful judgment? At the mere thought of such things my limbs stiffen. 

..then will each Christian be examined whether he has the seal of holy baptism and the treasure of the faith ; each Christian will be asked whether he has lived according to his renunciation of Satan and his works, not only one or two of his works, but all in general. Oh, blessed is he who has faithfully kept his promise! Then is announced that woeful sentence which parts men for ever from one another: bishops from bishops, priests from priests, deacons and lectors from their companions in orders; children from their parents, brothers from their sisters, friends from their friends. After the separation has taken place, the reprobate will call upon the elect with unspeakable lamentation, and will say: 

Farewell ye saints and servants of God! farewell ye prophets, apostles, and martyrs! farewell ye parents, children, and friends! farewell for ever thou most Blessed Virgin, Mother of God! All ye have prayed for the salvation of our souls but we would not be saved. Farewell saving Cross! farewell Paradise, thou field of delights, thou everlasting kingdom, thou heavenly Jerusalem! Fare well ye blessed! Farewell to bliss! We shall see you no more! We are sinking into an abyss of pain and torments; we have no more hope of salvation for ever 

Now is the time for us to seek mercy and gain it for our loved ones through prayer.  Life is short.

What will Heaven be like ?

 

Manila (or indeed any city) is not my soul’s natural habitat and so periodically I make my escape, usually to the Cordillera mountain range in the north where I have a selection of hide-outs, towns and villages, clefts in the rock where I can find restoration after the assaults of city life. I chose a familiar one this week where I could just rest without going into explorer mode. My chosen inspirational material was a book about heaven.

We don’t hear much about heaven. Some say we will be singing a lot …. but somehow after what we have and will still have to go through to get there, there must be something a whole lot better than just singing! 

We may think of redemption as being Jesus putting right everything we did wrong, re-writing our life stories through His saving sacrifice such that everything was as it should have been lived out, down to the smallest detail. Then heaven must be that we reign with Him as the men and women we were created to be, every heart’s desire fulfilled, every creative urge running to its end. And yet there is not much in our current situation to suggest this. There is only the occasional glimpse or a flash back from the Eden we lost but still see around us like bread crumbs to keep us on the trail.

I have a friend who has a fish farm in the middle of a crater lake. The houses around the lake have no electricity so at night the sky is lit up with a beautiful array of stars, also reflected on the still surface of the water. Another hideout I frequent is often visited by an eagle who circles above the peaks as I watch in the valley. This week it was a rainbow I saw above the rice fields as a powerful storm moved in towards the town and breath-taking sunsets! How beautiful heaven must be in all its glory. 

Often life seems utterly tragic and far from glorious but even in its brokenness we see the promise. I met an old lady with Alzheimer’s this week, who had only two memories left. She was perhaps in her 90’s, and told me about her childhood when she went to stay in the dormitory of the Belgian nuns who opened the first school in their town up in the mountains. She was in the first intake, first in her family to go to school and the first to become Catholic. Her memory was a happy one and very detailed. And on a loop, she must have told me 10 times but she was enjoying it so much that I stayed and listened again. The other memory was how much she loved God, she spoke of Him with such affection and joy, also several times. I imagine she will be seeing heaven before too long and she will be fully restored, her youth and beauty, her mind and memories, all her hardships and disappointments erased, all things perfected. And then the real adventure begins. An eternity of joy where she can do all she ever wanted to do and was created for. This is also our hope and His promise.

What is Evil ?

 

Why did God create evil? The answer struck me to the core of my soul!

A professor at the university asked his students the following question:

- Everything that exists was created by God?

One student bravely answered:

- Yes, created by God.

- Did God create everything? - a professor asked.

"Yes, sir," replied the student.

The professor asked :

- If God created everything, then God created evil, since it exists. And according to the principle that our deeds define ourselves, then God is evil.

The student became silent after hearing such an answer. The professor was very pleased with himself. He boasted to students for proving once again that faith in God is a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said:

- Can I ask you a question, professor?

"Of course," replied the professor.

A student got up and asked:

- Professor, is cold a thing?

- What kind of question? Of course it exists. Have you ever been cold?

Students laughed at the young man's question. The young man answered:

- Actually, sir, cold doesn't exist.

According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is actually the absence of heat. A person or object can be studied on whether it has or transmits energy.

Absolute zero (-460 degrees

Fahrenheit) is a complete absence of heat. All matter becomes inert and unable to react at this temperature.

Cold does not exist. We created this word to describe what we feel in the absence of heat.

A student continued:

- Professor, does darkness exist?

— Of course it exists.

- You're wrong again, sir. Darkness also does not exist. Darkness is actually the absence of light. We can study the light but not the darkness.

We can use Newton's prism to spread white light across multiple colors and explore the different wavelengths of each color. You can't measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into the world of darkness and and illuminate it. How can you tell how dark a certain space is? You measure how much light is presented. Isn't it so? Darkness is a term man uses to describe what happens in the absence of light.

In the end, the young man asked the professor:

- Sir. does evil exist?

This time it was uncertain, the professor answered:

- Of course, as I said before. We see him every day. Cruelty, numerous crimes and violence throughout the world. These examples are nothing but a manifestation of evil.

To this, the student answered:

- Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist for itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is like darkness and cold—a man-made word to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not faith or love, which exist as light and warmth. Evil is the result of the absence of Divine love in the human heart. It's the kind of cold that comes when there is no heat, or the kind of darkness that comes when there's no light.

The student's name was Albert Einstein.

“You don’t know you’re born!”

 

There was a TV series years ago, based on events in Bosnia and the experiences of the UN peace keeping force which highlighted the contrast between real suffering and what often passes for it. The scene would be familiar to those in the military I think; a soldier having completed his tour of duty returned to civilian life and was pushing a shopping cart around a supermarket in a daze as he tried to adjust to this new reality. In one isle was a mother and child; the latter was having a tantrum and holding the mother to ransom over a toy she ‘needed’. 

The soldier found the scene quite unbearable, sickening to watch, as he told them how trivial this was by recalling a recent memory and said “I have seen people who were on fire”. 

Of course the natural selfishness and sense of entitlement often displayed by children is usually eliminated eventually by good parenting and the onset of gratitude for being so fortunate. 

Many years later a news story caught my attention. At the very beginning of the ISIS invasion of Iraq a town was invaded and all the Christian families were evicted at gunpoint with just the clothes on their backs. One patriarch was interviewed on the news as he sat with his entire family, wife, children, grandchildren and other relatives in a tent in a makeshift refugee camp. He was crying as he lamented his losses, his farm, vehicles, cash, crops and livestock and he exclaimed “we used to live like Kings, now look at us” 

Two weeks later, as ISIS got a taste for their work, the narrative changed from evictions of Christian families to martyrdoms. There was a big change of perspective for the early survivors, as they realised that they still had each other and the opportunity of starting again.

Acceptance and gratitude to God for what we have in the moment will help us to guard our hearts, retain our composure and be at peace despite setbacks.