CAPG's Blog 

"Heaven and earth shall pass always". St. Luke 21.33.

Ah! my friend, how are you? How do you do? Where are you going? These are everyday expressions, dear brethren. Probably some neighbor spoke to you thus as you were coming to Mass. This is the first Sunday in Advent, the Sunday of Judgment, and I am going to put the same questions to you. I begin with the last one. Where are you going? young men, old men, women, girls, children, people, priests, rich and poor, where are you all going? are you going to church or for a walk? No, we have a trial at court and are summoned to appear. Whose trial? Our own. Yes, we are all going to judgment, the trial of eternity before the all-seeing Judge. We are all formed in a great procession. No matter whether we are good or bad, in a state of grace or of mortal sin, no matter if our cause be just or unjust, we are all going to judgment - all going to the great trial, in which every living soul, each man and woman and child, shall be the prisoners at the bar, and God, the judge of all, shall sit upon the great white Throne.

When will that trial day come? No one knows, not even the angels, our Lord says. Judgment will come suddenly. Times has been given you. You have been told "beforehand." The actual coming will be sudden. "Behold, I come as a thief in the night." "Behold, I come quickly." "Behold, I come as the lighting." Such are the terms in which our Lord speaks of His second advent. When men are eating and drinking, marrying, buying, and selling, burying the dead, laboring, prayer, waking or sleeping, then there will be a cry heard, "behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye forth to meet him." Go forth just as you are; just as the moment finds you; without a moment more to prepare, without an instant in which to say, "God help me!"

Where are you going, then? going to judgment. Going to a sudden judgment. Going to meet accusers who will rise out of the graves of earth and from the pit of hell to bear witness against sinners for all the commandments they have broken, all the duties they have neglected, all the scandal and bad example they have given. Woe to bad parents in that day! Woe to disobedient children in that day! Woe to the drunken, the impure, the thieves, the liars, the false witnesses, the apostates in that day! Ah! then, how do you do, Christian, Catholic! How are you baptized of God? How is your health, the health of your soul? Are you in the fever of sin? Do you see upon your souls great livid plague-spots of mortal offenses against the Almighty! Then tremble, for you have to face the God "whose eyes are brighter than the noonday sun"! He will ask: "How are you? What mean these stains upon your soul? Where is the white garment that I gave you? Where is my image and likeness?" Woe to every one who cannot answer these questions; for to be unable to answer means to be unable to go to heaven, it means that you will be found guilty by the Eternal Judge and condemned to everlasting death. Let, then, these two questions ring in your ears: Where are you going? How are you in God's sight? You are going to judgment. Are you in a fit state to appear there?

Brethren, it will be an awful day, that day of judgment, even for the just. "Where, then, shall the unjust and the sinner appear?" Look up to the heavens as you leave this church. The clouds are not yet riven. The sun is not yet darkened. Oh! then there is yet time. There is a moment's lull before the storm breaks; a second's pause before the trumpet sounds. But the day of judgment will come, for Jesus Christ has told us so, and, as he says: "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."

Source: Five minute sermons for Low Masses on all Sundays of the year the Paulist Fathers