Nov 23: He Will Judge the World

Michelangelo Buonarroti: The Last Judgment (detail)

Tuesday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Responsorial Psalm: 96:10, 11-12, 13

“He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth (NRSV, Ps 96:13b).”

Every moment, Lord, from that very first moment in my mother’s womb, you challenge me with the offer of growth in your divine life that I might become something new. Every moment for me is judgment.

The past falls way. It is no longer. It is what I choose now, in the moment, in response to your gift, that makes me what I am. There is “yes” and “no” and degrees of “yes” and “no.” You, Lord, give me the power and the opportunity to choose but I make the choice. I am responsible. Finally Lord, I am the one who passes judgment on myself, and I do it in every moment. In your one act that is your being, Lord, that judgment is confirmed and you call me out of the moment to something better.

I am grateful to you, Lord, for forgiveness, freely offered if only I accept it. You do not hold my past sins against me. No payment is required. My sins are forgiven and gone, not to be weighed up against me on another day. In each moment then I am exactly what I make myself to be in response to your grace.

It is my prayer, Lord, at the final moment of my physical life, my life here on earth, that, freed by your forgiveness from a past that drops away, I shall embrace your divine life with all the strength that you give to me, a choice that will then be mine through all eternity.

Alleluia. Amen.