What is Keeping Us From Union with Christ?

What is keeping us from union with Christ?



Nov. 20 - Christ, King of the Universe


As we remember, there are two judgments, the first immediately after death which we believe will be not so much Christ judging us but rather a self-judgment. In the light of Christ we will see ourselves as we are and every day we pray that this solemn moment will find us friends of the Master.


Then there is the General Judgment. As we go through life we note so many injustices going apparently unpunished while so many good people suffer grievously (typical in our time were the tornadoes of last Spring and Summer which killed innocent people and destroyed their homes and livelihood). Our Divine Master, infinitely just, will assemble all humanity in some way we cannot even imagine because of the enormous numbers, and will explain the workings of his grace and his love in all our lives down to the smallest detail.


That is the general theme of today's liturgy. However, the Opening Prayer is in praise of God now, not as He may or may not be in the future.


The First Reading is largely positive: the Lord as Good Shepherd, not Bad Judge. Yet the tone is not entirely positive and the note of judgment appears again in the final lines. The blunt fact is that God is good but so must we be. There is no free lunch. The side of the Judge we find ourselves on is OUR choice and we will not be able to blame Him.


The beautiful 23rd. Psalm gives us our Responsorial.


The words of St. Paul in the Second Reading may seem pretty obvious to us but they were anything but obvious to the men and women of Corinth who heard or read them for the first time. If Christianity seems perfectly logical to us today it was not so to the Corinthians: Paul was asking them to believe that a mysterious Jew (already a problem because they were pagans)had lived, made a tremendous impression, had been put to death and then had risen from the dead and was their main hope of a Life after life! WHAT?? Is the man out of his mind?


What is the criterion set by Jesus in the Gospel for success in life? There is only one: love. "As you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me." There are different levels of meaning here. The Lord establishes a close link between "the least" and his "brethren," or disciples. So the current tendency to write off the clergy just because some of them have been unworthy, is quite dangerous. But that is not everything. Jesus has also in mind "the least" i.e. children toward whom he showed a special tenderness and he certainly has in mind the poor and deprived that are "always with us." It would be too easy to say that if we are "good to the poor" we have done all that the Lord requires. We must also be good to ourselves, i.e. live in such a way as to be judged favorably. There are many levels in this Gospel and, as we end the Church Year, 2011, it would be a good idea to see how we stand vis a vis each of them.


~ November 2011 Concord