Homily Three for the Sunday of the Last Judgement
By St. John of Kronstadt
(Delivered in 1907)
By St. John of Kronstadt
(Delivered in 1907)
“But the Lord shall endure forever; He has prepared His throne for judgment. He shall judge the world in righteousness, and He shall administer judgment for the peoples in uprightness” (Psalm 9:8–9).
On this Sunday, the Church is appointed to solemnly remember and serve the terrible future judgment of Christ upon the whole human race, which is to take place at the end of the world. And this judgment will take place soon, as the righteous Judge of all Himself testifies. "Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to his works" (Rev. 22:12). And there is nothing more certain and inevitable, as well as more immutable, than the truth that there will be a general judgment upon the human race, at which the fate of all people for all eternity will be finally decided.
God is the Creator and Lawgiver, and the King of every creation, who has given immutable laws to all creatures. By fulfilling these laws they exist and remain in prosperity, but through violation they suffer, become corrupt and are destroyed. Laws have been given to heaven and earth, to the sun, moon and stars. "I have given all the stars commandments" (Is. 45:12), and through their firm fulfillment they exist in orderly order for so many thousands of years, proclaiming the glory of God. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands" (Ps. 18:2).
Man, the rational creation of God, the king of earthly creatures, was also given by the Creator firm and immutable laws, deeply embedded in the depths of his being, in his conscience and heart, and he is obliged to fulfill them as a rule of life, as a sacred and immutable duty of a creature in relation to its Creator. The good of his life depended and still depends on the fulfillment of these laws: closeness to the Creator, union with Him, peace, joy, immortality, and their violation entailed all sorts of disasters - the destruction of the union with the Creator, confusion in the soul and body, darkness, sorrow and distress, damnation, illness and death. The first people were not faithful to God for long through the fulfillment of this commandment and were blessed by their union with Him. The union was treacherously broken, man sinned and upset the wondrous harmony of his God-like nature, corrupting his mind, heart and will, defiling his conscience, fell into unpayable debts before his Creator and subjected himself to the terrible judgment of God's truth. The terrible judgments of God began to be executed upon the human race, immediately Adam and Eve were the first to hear from the Creator Himself the terrible judgment of the curse and death and expulsion from the paradise of sweetness for the cultivation of the earth, and then the Lord condemned the first world of people to destruction by a flood; the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah - to destruction by a rain of fire and sulfur, then civil strife and bloody wars of nations, crop failures, pestilences, earthquakes began as punishment for sins and through all times, even to our ill-fated time, the Lord shows His terrible judgments upon nations, as well as upon individuals.
Our present bloody war with the pagans is also the righteous judgment of God for our sins. The approach of the final, universal, terrible judgment of God is accelerated by the terrible outpouring of evil on earth. At the present time, all sorts of unrighteousness, like a sea, covers the earth; there is no end to human self-will, the doors are wide open to all kinds of errors and vices. The laws of God have been trampled; creatures have forgotten their Creator; sinful people, in their pride, have deemed themselves innocent; defiled by all kinds of impurities, they have forgotten their own filth. "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger" (Isaiah 1:3), but Christians have turned away from their Christ, their Savior, who redeemed them with His blood from the curse and death.
"From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is not a healthy spot in society: the whole head is sick, the whole heart is wasted away; wounds, bruises, festering sores, untreated and unbandaged and not softened with oil... If the Lord of hosts had not left us a small remnant, then we would be the same as Sodom, we would be like Gomorrah" (Is. 1:6-9). These words of the prophet go straight to our time: "Among the people, one will be oppressed by another, and every man by his neighbor; the young man will exalt himself insolently against the old, and the commoner against the noble" (Is. 3:5). Our young intellectuals have perverted every social and educational order: they took upon themselves the business of politics and justice, without being called to it by anyone; they undertook to judge their superiors, teachers, the government, and almost the kings themselves; judged and condemned with their head Leo Tolstoy the universal and terrible Judge Christ God Himself, who is coming with glory to judge the living and the dead; they boldly condemned the holy Church of Christ, "which has no blemish or stain, or anything of the sort" (Eph. 5:27), its teaching, the saving mysteries, and the servants of Christ. Truly, the day of the coming of the terrible Judge for the judgment of all people is near, because the predicted apostasy from God has already come and the forerunner of the Antichrist has already been revealed, "the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped... For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie (and they believe the liar Tolstoy), that they all might be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:4, 7-12).
Listen and read, modern faithless intellectuals, these words of the Holy Spirit: they apply to you.
"Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to his works" (Rev. 22:12). Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
Man, the rational creation of God, the king of earthly creatures, was also given by the Creator firm and immutable laws, deeply embedded in the depths of his being, in his conscience and heart, and he is obliged to fulfill them as a rule of life, as a sacred and immutable duty of a creature in relation to its Creator. The good of his life depended and still depends on the fulfillment of these laws: closeness to the Creator, union with Him, peace, joy, immortality, and their violation entailed all sorts of disasters - the destruction of the union with the Creator, confusion in the soul and body, darkness, sorrow and distress, damnation, illness and death. The first people were not faithful to God for long through the fulfillment of this commandment and were blessed by their union with Him. The union was treacherously broken, man sinned and upset the wondrous harmony of his God-like nature, corrupting his mind, heart and will, defiling his conscience, fell into unpayable debts before his Creator and subjected himself to the terrible judgment of God's truth. The terrible judgments of God began to be executed upon the human race, immediately Adam and Eve were the first to hear from the Creator Himself the terrible judgment of the curse and death and expulsion from the paradise of sweetness for the cultivation of the earth, and then the Lord condemned the first world of people to destruction by a flood; the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah - to destruction by a rain of fire and sulfur, then civil strife and bloody wars of nations, crop failures, pestilences, earthquakes began as punishment for sins and through all times, even to our ill-fated time, the Lord shows His terrible judgments upon nations, as well as upon individuals.
Our present bloody war with the pagans is also the righteous judgment of God for our sins. The approach of the final, universal, terrible judgment of God is accelerated by the terrible outpouring of evil on earth. At the present time, all sorts of unrighteousness, like a sea, covers the earth; there is no end to human self-will, the doors are wide open to all kinds of errors and vices. The laws of God have been trampled; creatures have forgotten their Creator; sinful people, in their pride, have deemed themselves innocent; defiled by all kinds of impurities, they have forgotten their own filth. "The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's manger" (Isaiah 1:3), but Christians have turned away from their Christ, their Savior, who redeemed them with His blood from the curse and death.
"From the sole of the foot to the crown of the head there is not a healthy spot in society: the whole head is sick, the whole heart is wasted away; wounds, bruises, festering sores, untreated and unbandaged and not softened with oil... If the Lord of hosts had not left us a small remnant, then we would be the same as Sodom, we would be like Gomorrah" (Is. 1:6-9). These words of the prophet go straight to our time: "Among the people, one will be oppressed by another, and every man by his neighbor; the young man will exalt himself insolently against the old, and the commoner against the noble" (Is. 3:5). Our young intellectuals have perverted every social and educational order: they took upon themselves the business of politics and justice, without being called to it by anyone; they undertook to judge their superiors, teachers, the government, and almost the kings themselves; judged and condemned with their head Leo Tolstoy the universal and terrible Judge Christ God Himself, who is coming with glory to judge the living and the dead; they boldly condemned the holy Church of Christ, "which has no blemish or stain, or anything of the sort" (Eph. 5:27), its teaching, the saving mysteries, and the servants of Christ. Truly, the day of the coming of the terrible Judge for the judgment of all people is near, because the predicted apostasy from God has already come and the forerunner of the Antichrist has already been revealed, "the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped... For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie (and they believe the liar Tolstoy), that they all might be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:4, 7-12).
Listen and read, modern faithless intellectuals, these words of the Holy Spirit: they apply to you.
"Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to his works" (Rev. 22:12). Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
