Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
October 24, 2018
The Supreme Judge
In
the climate of silence and downright “omerta” which is reigning in the Church,
once more Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s voice has resonated. Replying to Cardinal Marc Ouellet he
reiterated that the McCarrick scandal is merely the point of an immense iceberg
represented by the dominance of a powerful homosexual lobby inside the Church.
I
don’t want to dwell on this tragic reality. It seems to me instead, that it is
important to stress a point illuminating
the supernatural light of Monsignor
Viganò’s testimony: the reference to the responsibilities that each one of us
will have on the Day of Judgment. Turning to his brother bishops and priests,
the Archbishop writes: “You too are faced with
a choice. You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the
conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of
corruption. You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put
off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood
and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then
the following day, and so on. On the other hand, you can choose to speak.
You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not
say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to
consider which choice-- on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge -- you
will not regret having made.”
Today nobody speaks about the ultimate destinies of
man, at one time called “The Four Last Things”: death, judgment, hell, heaven. This is the reason for the relativism and nihilism
which is rampant in society. Man has
lost the awareness of his own identity, the purpose of his life, and
precipitates each day into the void of the abyss. Yet no reasonable man can
ignore that earthly life is not all there is. Man is not a mass of cells, but
is made up of soul and body and after death there is another life, which cannot
be the same for those who have either worked for what is good or worked for
what is evil. Today, even inside the Church, many bishops and priests are
living immersed in practical atheism, as if
there were no future life. But
they cannot forget that a last judgment awaits us all. This judgment will take place in
two moments.
The first judgment, called the particular, is that at
the time of death. In this instant a ray
of light will penetrate the soul in depth, to reveal what ‘she’ is and to fix
forever her happy or unhappy fate. The scenario of our existence will appear
before our eyes. From the very first moment when God brought us forth from
nothing to being, He has conserved us in life with infinite love, offering us
day by day, second by second, the graces necessary to save ourselves. At the particular judgment we will see
clearly what was asked of us in our particular vocation: that of a mother, a
father or a priest. Illuminated by the Divine light the soul ‘herself’ will
pronounce her own definitive judgment, which will coincide with the judgment of
God. The sentence will be either eternal life or eternal punishment. There is no higher tribunal to appeal the
sentence to, since Christ is the ultimate, the Supreme Judge. And, as St. Thomas teaches “illuminated by
this light on its merits and demerits, the soul goes by itself to its eternal
place, similar to those bodies by their levity or gravity that rise or descend
there where they have to end their movement” (Summa Theologiae, Suppl.
q. 69, a. 2). “This – explains Father Garrigou Lagrande, - happens at the first instant in which the soul
is separated from the body, so that it is as true to say of a person who is
dead as it is true to say that he has been judged.” (Eternal life and the
depths of the soul, Fede e Cultura, Verona, 2018, p.94).
In a
revelation, which, by God’s permission, a religious received from a young
friend who had been damned, we read: “in the instant of my passage I came out
brusquely from the dark. I saw myself flooded by a blinding light precisely in
the place where my dead body lay. It happened as in the theatre when the lights
are switched off and the curtain is raised on an unexpected scene, tremendously
bright – the scene of my life. As if in a mirror I saw my soul, I saw the
graces trampled upon, starting from my youth until that last “no”. I felt like a murderer who had been shown his
victim; “Repent? Never! – Be ashamed? Never! Yet, I couldn’t resist the gaze of that God
Whom I had rejected. I was left with
only one thing to do: flee. Like Cain fled Abel, so my soul was driven far away
from the sight of that horror. It was my particular judgment. The invisible
Judge said: “Be gone from me!” Then my soul, like a yellow shadow of sulphur,
plunged into the eternal torment.”
However the Divine teaching does not stop here and
reveals a second judgment to us – the universal judgment, which awaits us,
when, at the end of earthly things, God, in his omnipotence, will resurrect out
bodies. In the first judgment the individual soul was judged. At the Universal
Judgment the whole man will be judged, in soul and body. This second judgment
will be public because man is born and lives in society and each one of his
actions has social repercussions. The life of every human-being will be revealed,
since “there is nothing covered, that
shall not be revealed: nor hidden, that shall not be known” (Luke 12, 2).
No circumstance will be omitted: not an action, not a word, not a desire. As
Father Francesco M. Gaetani (The Supreme Destinies of Man, Università
Gregoriana Roma 1951), points out, all the scandals, all the intrigues, all the
dark projects, all the secret sins, cancelled by memory will be made public. All
masks will fall away, the hypocrites and
the pharisees will be unmasked. Those who had tried to hide the gravity of
their own sins from themselves, will be confused in seeing the vanity of all
the excuses they had advanced; the passions, the circumstances, the obstacles.
Against them the example of the elect will give witness; men perhaps who were
weaker and worn out, less endowed by the gifts of nature and grace, who were
able nonetheless to remain faithful to duty and virtue. Only on the sins of the
good will God draw over a merciful veil.
At the Last
Judgment the good will be publically separated from the wicked and with
their glorified body will go with Christ
to Heaven to possess the Kingdom prepared for them by the Father since the
foundations of the world, while the reprobates will go damned into the eternal
fire prepared by the Devil and the other rebel angels. Each one of us will be
judged according to the talents received, according to the role that God
assigned us in society. Those who will be treated the most severely will be the
Shepherds of the Church who have betrayed their flocks. Not only those who have opened the sheep-pen
to the wolves, but also those, who, while these wolves were devouring the
flocks, shrugged their shoulders, turned their heads, raised their eyes to heaven, remained in silence and cast the
responsibility, which is theirs, onto God. But life is an acceptance of
responsibility and Monsignor Viganò’s testimony reminds us of this.
The words of the courageous Archbishop are a public
reproach to the Shepherds who are silent. May God show them that silence is not
an inescapable choice. To speak up is possible, and at times it is a duty. Yet
the testimony of Monsignor Viganò is also a call to every Catholic to reflect
on their future destiny. The hour of judgment that awaits us all is known to
God alone. Hence Jesus says: “Take ye
heed, watch and pray. For ye know not when the time is. And what I say to you,
I say to all: Watch. ” (Mark 13, 33,37).
The time in which we live requires vigilance and calls
for a choice. It is the historical hour of fortitude and confidence in God,
infinitely just, but also infinitely merciful towards those, who, despite their
weakness, will serve Him openly.
Translation:
Contributor Francesca Romana
