A SERMON FOR THE 7TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
A quick word today about that vexing question of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. Why vexing? Because, simply put, we have a hard time reconciling two of God’s attributes, namely, that he is both all-merciful and yet all-just. If God is so merciful, how come he can condemn someone to hell for all eternity? But our Lord himself speaks of judgment and hell, and makes it perfectly clear that those who don’t follow the commandments will be thrown by the angels into the outer darkness where there will forever be weeping and gnashing of teeth. It’s a hard image to reconcile with our statue of the Sacred Heart, and yet, we know by our faith that it’s true.
The problem is, we tend to judge others by the traits of our own character. Even with God we try to think of him as having the same “good” characteristics that we have, whatever they may be. We poor humans are all victims of our own personality, and whether we ourselves tend to the side of justice or the side of mercy, this is how we are going to think of God. Some people are very appreciative of the virtue of justice. They feel that if someone commits a crime, he should pay the appropriate penalty, even including execution in some cases. And you’d be right to expect that justice be observed and carried out. These people have no trouble imagining hell, and just wonder how so many make it to heaven. Others though are more the forgiving type. They see the good in others, even the worst criminals, and go out of their way to find the mitigating factors in a person’s life that led him to commit his bad deeds. His environment, an abusive father or negligent mother, poverty, genetics, whatever. When they think of prison, they don’t view it as retribution or punishment for the crime, but rather as an opportunity to rehabilitate the offender.
Both of these approaches have their merits—justice and mercy are both virtues, after all. But they also both have their drawbacks—either one can be taken to extremes. Those who are overly just can become vindictive, and the punishment ends up not fitting the crime… the abusive father who beats a child for taking a cookie. The racist who lynches a black man for looking at a white woman. Justice, the letter of the law, no room for mercy. But there are also those who mistakenly think that’s it being charitable to try and always excuse and even ignore actions that are morally bad or detrimental to society. Focusing on the spark of good that exists in every man, they turn a blind eye to their evil deeds. With this attitude, we would never enforce laws and society would collapse. We can’t and shouldn’t open the prisons and let everybody out, and no more should we open the borders and let everybody in.
Our own personalities draw us in one direction or the other, towards justice or towards charity. And there’s always the danger of falling into one of these two extremes. Instead, we should try very hard to find that perfect balance between them. In doing so, we’ll very quickly realize that finding that perfect balance is impossible. We can make laws and we can enforce laws; we can apply them to society and demand that the individuals within that society obey them. But how can we truly judge another human being, when we don’t have complete knowledge of his motivations, his personal history, his psychological state, or indeed any of those other factors that play a role in determining a man’s actions? Half the time we don’t even know why we ourselves do things. So how can we possibly expect to judge others with that measure of perfect justice and perfect charity? All we can do is judge the externals—the speech, the actions of individuals, but we can’t possibly know what’s going on in their conscience, or what’s going on in their mind when they speak or act. Not even the Church can do that. We make laws and judge people according to the externals, but we never, ever judge the soul of a man. Take suicide for instance. The Church can make a law and tell us that suicide is a mortal sin. It can tell us we’re not permitted to provide a Catholic burial for someone who kills himself. But the Church cannot tell us whether that man managed to say sorry to God as the overdose took effect or as he’s pulling the trigger. The Church cannot tell us what his state of mind was, or whether it had got to the point where he was no longer responsible for his actions. And the Church certainly can’t tell us for certain whether he ended up in heaven or hell. The Church judges the external acts of a man, but never the internal thoughts and intentions.
The Church is not the ultimate judge. Even less so is the State. And thank God for that! Thank God that he, God, will be our judge! That in the end, there will finally be a judge who knows everything about us, not only the good and the bad acts we do, but more importantly the things that he alone knows, our internal disposition when we perform our good and bad acts. He alone can judge with perfect justice and perfect mercy.
But is he really all-merciful? How can a loving God turn his back on a frail human being who, out of weakness has committed a mortal sin, condemning him to an eternity in hell? How is that merciful? It’s just, certainly, but how does it show God’s mercy? The answer lies in free will, and God’s perfect knowledge of how each individual uses that free will. It lies also in the nature of a mortal sin, which is the deliberate choice to abuse our free will to offend God by following our own will when it conflicts with his. God doesn’t interfere in this process. He didn’t give us free will so that he could then prevent us from doing something bad at the appropriate time. God can’t prevent us from going to hell, because he has given us a will that is free. It’s a beautiful gift that he has given us, this free will that allows us to love God freely, that puts us above the level of the animals. But it’s a gift that has consequences. It puts the choice between heaven and hell squarely on our shoulders. It is our own abuse of this beautiful gift that condemns us. Effectively, God’s judgment is nothing more than the acknowledgment of what we ourselves have chosen. It’s not God who sends us to hell. We do.
For this reason, today’s Gospel is a warning to us that we must not judge ourselves too leniently. We tend to think, “Here I am, Sunday Mass, I’ve doing my duty for the day, what a jolly good fellow I am.” But our Lord tells us “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” It’s just not enough to know that Christ is God. It’s not enough to acknowledge Christ as our Lord and Saviour. It’s not even enough to worship him, to pray to him every day, to adore and venerate and bless his holy Name. All of these are good, but none of these is sufficient. We must also love God. And how do we do that? “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.”
So when we’ve finished here this morning and leave this hallowed sanctuary, when we’ve done our duty by keeping the Third Commandment, we must then turn our attention out there to the other nine commandments, and keep them also. If we keep all ten commandments, we stand a chance of receiving mercy on Judgment Day. And if we keep that greatest of all the commandments, the law upon which all other laws depend, in other words if we love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, then assuredly we will be saved.
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