Pope at Angelus: We will be judged on love
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| The Apostolic Palace, where Pope Francis addresses the crowds each week ahead of prayer of the Angelus. On Sunday, Pope Francis spoke about the last judgment, the subject of the day's Gospel. |
(Vatican Radio) In his Angelus address on
Sunday, Pope Francis reflected on the last judgement,
the subject of the day’s Gospel reading.
He noted that this is the last Sunday of the liturgical
year, the day on which the Church celebrates the Solemnity of Christ
the King of the Universe. Christ’s kingship, he said, is one “of guidance
and service, but it is also a kingship that at the end of time will be asserted
in judgement.” The vision of the second coming of Christ, presented in the
Gospel, introduces the final judgment, when all of humanity will appear before
Him, and Jesus, exercising His authority, will separate one from another, “as the
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
Pope Francis recalled the criteria that Jesus says will be
the foundation of His judgment: “What you did for the least of my brothers,
that you did on to me.” This sentence, the Pope said, “never fails to strike
us, because it reveals to us” the end to which God is willing to go on account
of His love for us. God goes so far as to identify Himself with us, not when we
are “happy and healthy, but when we are in need.” Thus, the Pope said, “Jesus
reveals the decisive criteria of His judgment, that is, the concrete love for
our neighbour in difficulty.”
Likewise, those who cursed, in the Gospel account, are
judged for failing to aid their brothers and sisters in their need. Pope
Francis repeated, “At the end of our life we will be judged on love, that is,
on our concrete commitment to love and to serve Jesus in our smallest and most
needy brothers.”
The Holy Father reminds us that Jesus will come at the end
of time to judge all nations; but He also “comes to us every day,
in so many ways, and asks us to welcome Him.” The Pope concluded his reflection
with the prayer that “the Virgin Mary might help us to
encounter Him and to receive Him in His Word and in the
Eucharist, and at the same time in our brothers and in our sisters who
suffer hunger, illness, oppression, injustice. May our hearts be able to
welcome Him in the ‘today’ of our life, so that we might be welcomed by Him
into the eternity of His Kingdom of light and of peace.”
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