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"SUFFERED UNDER
PONTIUS PILATE, WAS CRUCIFIED, DEAD, AND BURIED"
[THE ROMAN CATECHISM, Article IV] The Passion
VOL. 5 - THE CHRISTIAN’S LAST END
Fr. Francis Hunolt
THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY
The Summoning of the Dead to Judgment
“And I say to you that many
shall come from the east and the west.”—Matt. 8: 11
They will come from the east and the west, but what a vast difference there shall be
between them! Some shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of
heaven, while others shall be cast into the exterior darkness. When shall this coming, this
crisis take place? On the last day, when Jesus Christ shall summon all mankind from the
four quarters of the globe before his tribunal, to judge every one according to his works.
We have already considered the Judge as God, as Man, as our Saviour, and as our Model.
But in a judgment there are many persons besides the judge: there is the accused, who is
cited before the tribunal; there is the chief question on which he is to be tried; there are the
assessors, who examine the case; there are the accusers and witnesses, and finally there is
the sentence pronounced by the judge, which either absolves or condemns the accused. All
these circumstances are a source of consolation for the just, but a terror for the wicked.
The summoning of the accused before the tribunal is the subject of this day’s meditation,
which shall consist in the answer to this one question:
Who are those who shall be summoned? All men, without exception.
I. Faith tells us that all men shall be summoned to judgment. To prove that we and all
mankind shall be summoned before the tribunal of the Almighty nothing more is necessary
than the words of our Lord himself, the divine Judge: “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” (Matt. 25: 31, 32). All, without
exception, from every country in the world; great and small, rich and poor, men and
women, all who have ever lived on earth shall meet there. In the four quarters of the globe
shall be heard the awful sound of that trumpet which re-echoed in the ears of St. Jerome
day and night: Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment!
Now I wish to place before your mental vision a spectacle of terror and surprising change.
Quick, ye angels! Heavenly messengers, blow the trumpets! Sun be darkened! Moon hide
thy light! Stars fall down from heaven! Skies send down the fiery rain! Everything on
earth must be burnt up and reduced to ashes! Now, angels, sound the call: Arise, ye dead,
and come to judgment! Behold, says St. Paul, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trumpet” (1 Cor. 15: 52), the graves shall all be opened, the mouldering bones shall
come together, each soul shall enter into its body, “the dead shall rise again incorruptible”
(Ibid.). The dead shall come forth living. What an awful spectacle! In earthly judgments
the accused is warned some time beforehand, and a certain day is fixed for the hearing of
his case, so that he may be able to prepare for it. But here all is to happen in a moment, in
the twinkling of an eye, without any forewarning; when the summons comes the accused
must appear. In earthly tribunals the accused is allowed to bring his advocate with him, to
speak for him and plead his cause as best he may; here each one shall have to appear alone
and speak for himself and answer the questions put to him. Here one man is as good as
another, as far as respect for persons is concerned. “He shall separate them one from
another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep,”
that is, the just, “on his right hand, but the goats,” that is, the wicked, “on his left” (Matt.
25: 32, 33).
More: http://www.alcazar.net/SummoningoftheDeadtoJudgment.pdf
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Those Who Hear the Word of God without Fruit
“Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye.” _St. John 2: 5
Certainly a salutary and holy exhortation, and one worthy to fall from the lips of the Most Blessed Virgin, who
was specially enlightened by God, and whose will was never differentfrom the will of God.
“Whatsoever he shall say to ye, do ye;” if you are attentive to every word and
sign of my Son, you cannot go wrong. Let us all take this exhortation to ourselves, just as if we heard from the
lips of Mary, our dearest Mother, every time we hear a sermon, “whatsoever he shall say to ye, do ye;” be attentive
to all that God is about to say to your hearts, so as to live in accordance with it. Oh, if that were always done,
what great profit would accrue to souls! But, unfortunately, how many Christians there are who despise the Word
of God, and seldom go to sermons! Now I go on to speak of those who constantly hear sermons, amongst whom also
there are many who profit as little by what they hear as if they never came to a sermon at all.
How so? Many hear the Word of God in sermons, but without fruit or profit; because
the seed falls by the wayside.
There are three causes which prevent the seed that falls by the wayside from bearing
fruit.
1. The first is, because the wayside is an open public place, where the seed can
easily he blown away by the wind;
2. The second, because the seed, not being covered with earth, cannot take root;
3. The third, because it is liable to be trodden under foot by the passers-by, or to be eaten by the birds.
In like manner the devil has three ways of taking the Word of God out of the hearts of those who hear it, so that
it brings no fruit or profit to the soul.
I. Some, as if they were like a public way that is open on all sides, he prevents
from understanding the word of God; and these are the idle.
II. Others he prevents from attending to the roots, that is, to the principal truth that is explained; and these
are the curious.
III. With others again he causes the truths they have heard and understood to be trampled on and devoured; and
these are the tepid and lukewarm.
With all these people the efforts of the devil are to “take the Word out of their hearts, lest, believing, they
should be saved” (St. Luke 8: 12).
I. The first consists of those who hear the sermon with distracted minds—that is, those idle people who come to
church to hear a sermon, not through a supernatural motive to learn something good and to be aroused to do good,
but simply to pass away the time, or to accompany others, or to pass themselves off as good Christians, or merely
that they may be able to say that they have been to the sermon. Thus they are in the church in which the sermon
is preached, but they are, so to speak, not present at the sermon; their bodies are there, but not their minds
and hearts, which are occupied with a hundred voluntary distractions, so that they hear the sound of the preacher’s
voice by the outward organs of sense, and yet understand little or nothing of what he says. They show clearly enough
by their constant looking about at the least noise, by their nodding and bowing to those who come in, and sometimes,
too, by going asleep, that they have not brought attentive minds and hearts to the sermon, and that they are not
listening with any desire to profit by what they hear. And that is the very result that the spirit of envy, the
devil, tries so hard to bring about. He knows what harm the Word of God can do him when it is listened to with
a certain amount of attention and eagerness; it fills him with bitter envy to see so many souls thereby freed from
his slavery and led to love God zealously; and therefore he tries, in
every possible way, when he cannot prevent people from coming to the sermon, at least to distract them, so that
they understand little or nothing of it.
http://www.alcazar.net/ThoseWhoHearTheWordofGodwithoutFruit
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