CHRIST THE KING 2014
#160
Ez 34, 11-12.
15-17
Ps 23
1 Cor 15, 20-26, 28.
Mt 25, 31-46
Catholic Peace Fellowship
November 30, 2014
Deacon Tom Cornell
Our
first reading today, from the Prophet Ezekiel, pictures God as a shepherd
guarding and protecting his flock. But
the last verse has a note of warning. “I
will judge between one sheep and another, between rams and goats.” The familiar Psalm 23 has one jarring note as
well. “You spread a table before me in
the sight of my foes.” In short, there
are foes, we have enemies. Nevertheless,
“only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell
in the house of the Lord.” Saint Paul’s
First Letter to the Corinthians has an eschatological tone. Eschata
is the Greek word meaning the last things, that is, “death, judgment, heaven
and hell.” Paul tells us that “the last
enemy to be destroyed is death.” That
brings us to the Gospel reading for today, the Last Judgment scene from Matthew,
the separation of the sheep from the goats.
“Depart from me you accursed….”
But what is hell? Surely Dante
did not take literally his own description of damnation. He knew he was writing metaphor, inspired
metaphor at that.
George Bernanos said that hell is not
to love anymore. If that is so, what then
is heaven but a love-feast? There is an
image of heaven from the rabbinical tradition of heaven and hell as each a
banquet, each held in identical rooms.
In one room are the damned.
Plates piled with sumptuous goodies are placed before them but they
gnash their teeth because they cannot reach them, their forks and spoons are
too long. The room of the blessed is
identical in all ways, except that all are happy and content. They use their outsized forks and spoons to
feed each other.
We
build our heaven, we build our hell here on earth, here and now. We bring into the next life what we have made
of ourselves, sheep or goats. The Last
Judgment scene in Matthew’s Gospel inspired the Church teaching of the works of
mercy. Feed the hungry, give drink to
the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, all taken from today’s
Gospel reading. The Church added to bury
the dead. Each time we do any of these
things for the least of the brethren we do it for Jesus Christ, and conversely,
whenever we refuse we refuse Jesus.
Dorothy
Day liked to point out that the works of mercy are the direct opposite of the
works of war: destroy their crops, poison their wells, bomb, burn their
villages, their cities, their homes. Bury
the dead? Yes, as many as possible,
under the rubble of their own homes, fields and factories. There are spiritual works of mercy too. Instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful,
reprove sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive injuries, pray for the living
and the dead. Again, the works of war
are the exact opposite: deceive (it has been said that the first casualty of
every war is the truth); intimidate, force conscience to act against its own
judgment. Forgive? Not on your life. Give them back a dose of their own medicine,
twice and ten times over!
And
so we gather as a Catholic Peace Fellowship.
We are commemorating this month the fiftieth anniversary of a retreat
Thomas Merton called and led at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani on the
Spiritual Roots of Protest. A. J. Muste
was there, John Howard Yoder, the eminent Mennonite theologian, Dan and Philip
Berrigan. Martin Luther King and Bayard
Rustin had been invited but Dr. King had to go to Oslo to accept his Nobel
Peace Prize, and Bayard went with him.
Jim Forest and I were the youngest and are among those still alive. Merton gathered us around the question, Quo Warranto?, mediaeval Latin for “by
what right?” By what right, he asked, do
we question, challenge our betters, those put in authority over us, the
President and his advisers? Don’t they
know more than we do about what’s going on in Viet Nam? How dare we, by what right, do we speak out
against them, even actively resist?
Merton’s answer was simply to read
from the book of the Prophet Jeremiah: “You
duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped: you were too strong for me and you
triumphed. All the day I am an object of
laughter; everyone mocks me. Whenever I
speak I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message. The word of the Lord has brought me derision
and reproach all the day. I say to
myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like a fire burning in my
heart, imprisoned in my bones. I grow
weary holding it in, I cannot endure it” (Jer 20, 7-9).
We do it because we have to, that’s all. At times it has been thin gruel, but it’s
been a banquet nonetheless. Keep it up,
lest we be counted among the goats. W
