Homily One for the Sunday of the Last Judgement (St. Luke of Simferopol)

 

On the Last Judgment

By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea

(Delivered on February 24, 1946)

For the third month now, a terrible trial has been going on in Nuremberg over villains whom the world has never seen before, a terrible trial for them, for they are awaiting the death penalty.

This death penalty is demanded by the conscience of all peoples, of all humanity, for the world is shocked, as it has never been shocked before, by atrocities that cannot be described in words.

Tens of millions of civilians were exterminated, not to mention the killed soldiers. In the Auschwitz camp alone, 5,121,000 people were exterminated.

The whole world is full of indignation, the whole world is waiting with trepidation for the hour when a terrible sentence will be pronounced over these villains of the human race - over Goering, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Keitel and many others.

Human conscience demands their death penalty, human conscience demands that evil, terrible evil, not go unpunished.

What about God's justice? Will the Lord really tolerate such terrible evil? No matter how terrible, no matter how grandiose this evil is, it is only a drop in the sea of that evil that the All-Seeing Eye of God sees, which is known to the Omniscient Mind of God, for immeasurable streams of evil have flooded the human race since it has existed.

Since the very creation of the world, countless crimes have been committed in the eyes of God, blasphemous words and most unholy speeches have been uttered. Human virtue was constantly trampled underfoot and persecuted in this adulterous and sinful world.

You know how often the villains triumphed, how they prospered, while good and pure people perished. And at all times, in all centuries, the human conscience has been troubled by this, and everywhere people have asked themselves the question: “How long, Lord? When will the truth prevail? For the human heart cannot bear such black untruth; it cannot bear that evil is not punished and virtue is crowned."

Well, is it possible that everything in the world could be so meaningless, so unbearably unfair, that evil would triumph in it to the end? This cannot and will never happen, for above the world there is an All-Righteous and Just God, Who knows immeasurably more than we do how much evil is in human hearts. God is patient. God tolerates human wickedness for many thousands of years; He endures everything, for He waits until the precious fruits of goodness and piety ripen in a world full of evil and wickedness. For it is only for the sake of these fruits that the whole world was created by the love of God, so that the light of Christ would shine in the hearts of the chosen and pure, the love of Christ would shine, the truth of Christ would appear.

Do you know that, along with villains, there are countless good, pure people, there is a great host of holy saints of God?

And it is worth the world to exist so that from the gloomy and dark depths of humanity, hundreds of thousands, tens of millions of sons of God, sons of grace, will shine.

This is why the Lord endures.

He waits for Christ’s field to ripen, for the ears of God’s field to fill, for the full-fledged seeds of pure wheat to ripen and be ready to fall. But when this moment comes and the harvest is ready, then the harvest itself will be completed. Then the Lord will send His angels to His field, who will receive the command to reap the wheat and put it into the bins of God, and bind the tares into bunches and burn them with eternal fire. Then the time of God’s Last Judgment will come, immeasurably more terrible than the judgment that people are now committing in Nuremberg.

This trial will also be distinguished by the countless number of defendants, for at the sound of the trumpet of the Archangel, who will herald the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, all the dead will rise and appear at the Last Judgment of God, the inevitable judgment, the judgment about which Saint John the Theologian heard, who received his wondrous Revelation about the final destinies of the world.

He saw the martyrs at the throne of God, tortured for the name of Christ. They cried out to God: “Master, how long do you endure and not avenge our blood?” (Rev. 6:10).

Now tens of millions of those people who were recently exterminated by villains, tens of millions of the souls of babies thrown alive into the fire, millions of people killed in German gas chambers, old people, women, whole hordes of people and small children shot by the Germans are crying out to God. These souls cry out to Him: “Lord! How long do you not avenge our blood, how long do you endure?” This voice, the voice of tortured babies, old men and women, cries out to God so terribly that, apparently, the hour of the Last Judgment has approached.

The Lord told His disciples that no one knows when the end of the world will come, that only the Father knows this. But at the same time, the Lord indicated signs of the approach of the Last Judgment. He said that nation would rise against nation, there would be famines, pestilences and earthquakes. Still, this is the beginning of illness. He said that then there would be great tribulation, such as has not happened since the beginning of the world.

Has there ever been such grief as the Germans have now caused? No, it was not.

“And if those days had not been shortened, no flesh would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22). Then, on this terrible day of judgment, the terrible day of the Second Coming of Christ, the Judge of the whole world, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven; and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and He will send His angels with a loud trumpet, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other end of them” (Matthew 24:29-31).

"“Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near” (Matthew 24:32).

From this word of Christ, from this warning of Christ about what will precede the Last Judgment, we can conclude with some probability that this time is not far off. Perhaps humanity will still have to survive the third world war - and, probably, the last one, which will be more terrible than all previous wars.

We all waited with hope that after the victory over the fascist monsters there would be complete peace and harmony between those peoples who, through joint efforts, averted the terrible slavery that fascist atrocities prepared for the whole world. We waited.

And now, the further we go, the more we become convinced that there is no peace and harmony, for in different countries hatred and anger against our people is flaring up more and more often. The horizon is clouded with menacing black clouds, and the terrible specter of an atomic bomb hovers over the world.

The Lord Jesus Christ said: "When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?"

You know how now in all countries, in all peoples, unbelief and atheism have strengthened and multiplied. And there are few left of those whom the Lord called His "little flock." The times in which we live are so terrible, so terrible is the specter of God’s coming judgment, that judgment that you heard about today in the Gospel reading. I won't repeat it; you've learned the basics. You have heard why sinners, whom even the Lord calls cursed, will be condemned. You have heard why the righteous will shine in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father.

Only through love, works of mercy, for love is the whole essence of Christ’s law. Whose heart is full of love? Whose love is manifested in deeds of mercy towards their neighbors? Those who have embraced the light of the Gospel, for those the Kingdom of Heaven is prepared. They will hear from the Lord at the Last Judgment: “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

And they will enter the New Jerusalem, the Jerusalem that Saint John the Theologian saw descending from heaven, and they will go into eternal life and eternal blessedness. And those whom the Lord calls cursed will go to eternal torment, prepared for the devil and his servants.

There are many people who are outraged by the Last Judgment. They say: what justice is there in a person who has committed many sins during a very short time of his life and then experiences torment for an entire eternity? This question is raised by all those who do not accept the Gospel of Christ.

How do we respond to this? Shall we say that there is at least some truth in this judgment? Of course not.

For whom is eternal life destined? The human spirit, the spirit that was given to man by God Himself at the creation of Adam, when God breathed a living soul into his body. We are all carriers of the spirit. It is in spirit that we differ from dumb beasts, from all beasts that do not have the highest gifts of the Spirit of God.

What happens during human life? An incessant, daily formation of the spirit takes place. All our deeds, all feelings, words, thoughts are indelibly imprinted on our spirit and are assimilated by it. And our spirit grows and changes during our life under the influence of everything that it perceives from our actions, from our feelings and thoughts.

In the human spirit, something similar happens to what happens in a bunch of grapes, which, under the life-giving rays of the sun, under the heavenly morning dew, ripens and fills, which more and more assimilates the wonderful life force given from God to all living things, and shines with beauty. His life is given to it so that it matures and perceives the blessed gifts of the sun and nature. And when it matures, its death occurs. The bunches are picked, thrown into vats, trampled on, and the blood of grapes flows from them, grape juice flows, which then becomes wine. If it was a cluster full of beauty, full of all the most precious things that it can accumulate, then the wine obtained from it continues the life of the cluster. The pomace will rot, just as our body will rot, and the wine will remain in barrels for many, many years. And the longer the wine sits, the more precious it becomes. This life of grapes is similar to our earthly life, and the life of wine is similar to the eternal, immortal life of our spirit, when it is freed from ties with the body, which after death will rot, like grape pomace.

But you know that there are bad varieties of grapes, and there are sour grapes, the juice of which does not produce good wine. Such wine turns sour and becomes more and more disgusting.

It’s the same among people. There are those whose spirit during their lives is constantly improved in the direction of good and truth. Good deeds leave indelible marks on the human spirit, and the spirit becomes more and more perfect, pure and holy. This is the spirit of the righteous, those for whom the Kingdom of Heaven is prepared.

But there are people whose lives are full of crimes, disgusting sins, and their spirit is poisoned day after day by the poison of this spiritual filth. And this human spirit matures, endlessly matures in the direction of evil.

But the spirit is immortal, the spirit will live forever, and the direction that we give it during life - the direction towards good or the direction towards evil - will be its constant direction. The spirit of righteous people, who have loved Christ, who have loved true goodness, will continually improve, approaching the perfection of God Himself, in constant communication with God in the mansions of paradise. And the spirit of sinners, which during their lifetime delved deeper and deeper into evil, is doomed to continue in eternity and infinity this development towards evil, it is doomed to constant communication with Satan himself and in its boundless malice will come closer and closer to Satan.

This will be the eternal torment of sinners. It will consist in the fact that they will feel rejected from God, cursed by God, they will choke on their anger, their hatred of good and God.

Is God to blame for this? Did He condemn them in advance to eternal torment? They condemned themselves, they themselves chose the path of evil. And He allows them to walk in eternity along this path of evil.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.