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The Judge who doesn’t like to be judged
(or why all our actions matter in the end?)
A thread
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(or why all our actions matter in the end?)
A thread
(3:45) Nobody wants to be judged; I think that is what is “in” today. Nobody likes, after having done something bad once in his/her life, being called by others as a “bad person.” Putting hard labels like that on others is apparently bad.
Not so in the case of our Lord. Apparently, He is a judger—in a good and wholesome way. Stick around until the end.
Today we celebrate the solemnity of Christ the King because, well, He is our King. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him.
And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” We will hear very harsh actions and words from this King.
Everybody likes a kind-hearted and feels-good version of Christianity—any religion for that matter. We like to join with groups that makes us feel that we are the best that we can be out there and that is not a bad thing. God created us good, in fact “very good” (Genesis 1:31).
But actually not that very good. While are “good”, we are not very good in being consistently good. At times we do bad things here and then and good things here and then.
That doesn’t remove the fact that as human beings we have an inherent dignity that must be respected by anyone and at all times.
Judging then absolutizes our actions as our beings. For example, saying “Juan slapped his friend that other day” is different from “Juan IS a slapper of friends.” That one time incident doesn’t equate or reveal the innermost being of the person.
It may have been an accident, a spur of the moment, a passing emotion.
Actions doesn’t shape our identity; our identities must shape our actions. Mothers must do motherly actions. Students, studently actions. Police, doctors, vendors, and clerks must do things that fits their job description.
And here it goes further: as baptized Christians, we must do things that befits our dignity as being made heirs to the eternal life with God in heaven.
But sometimes we do bad things, we fail in living out our Christian vocation. And sometimes we keep on doing these bad things over and over and over again. Until the time comes that we only do bad things.
This are what we call vices—alcohol, smoking, cursing, bullying, impatience, rudeness, etc; any bad thing done repeatedly is a vice.
And vices—and its opposite, virtues, or the habit of doing good things—happen to really cause a change in our identity. When done repeatedly, actions sometimes do shape our identity. A good person with the vice of stealing gets called as a “thief” and that becomes true.
In the Gospel, a lamb can truly become a goat if it continues to do goat-things.
There is in Filipino a saying, “Kung saan nakahapay ang kawayan, doon ito babagsak” (Wherever the bamboo leans to, there it will eventually fall) If it leans facing north, good chances that it would fall north.
If it leans north and it falls south, be sure that someone or something did something to it. If a person is inclined to do steal and has done so many times, that habit can be very hard to change.
But unlike a bamboo which must inevitably fall where it leans to, humans can change the way they would fall. If done promptly, a “thief” can return to being a “good person” with enough effort.”
When Christ comes again, He will come to judge not who we were as babies but what we have done with the life He has gifted us with.
Will He come to see that the “good person” you were before is still the one He sees then or has it changed completely into something horrible and irreconcilable.
Christ will judge what we have done for ourselves, what we have judged ourselves to be; His judging is in fact just a “recognition” of who we have become in the course of our lives.
Though it may be a discouraging point, think of it this way: you are not a hopeless bamboo. You can change the place where you will fall in the end. It’s not too late; it never has been. But that is something that you judge for yourself.
In the end, we are our own judges.
In the end, we are our own judges.
Solemnity of Christ the King (Matt 25:31-46)
THe judge by twenty one pilots https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Zd3SpWqT7mHxCrggjjGwx?si=yzAVdBx3RS2fAm8uazlAaQ">https://open.spotify.com/playlist/...
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