2 Thesselonians 1:5-12. Paul is encouraging the Christian Thessalonians as they endure great persecution. In this passage, he reminds them that when Christ returns, they shall have rest from their afflictions, and their persecutors will be punished. He says that when Christ returns, he will inflict "vengeance upon those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus." They shall be eternally excluded from the presence of God, while those who have followed Jesus will marvel at his glory. Paul tells the Thessalonians they are suffering now in order to be made worthy of the kingdom of God.

Paul paints a picture of the meting out of justice on the last day by Jesus the judge (it reminds me of the "angry Jesus," as my sister calls it, at the Basilica of the National Shrine in DC🙂). He will come, Paul says, "with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God" or obey him. This is the way the Bible describes the Second Coming - that it will be a time of great tribulation before Jesus comes to judge us all. Jesus himself described it this way (see, for example, Matthew 24: 3-44.) Jesus also described himself sorting the heaven-bound sheep from the hell-bound goats (Matthew 25:31-46). It all sounds so scary, and terrible, and so not like our God of mercy! But, Jesus wouldn't lie to us, so we are to expect this at some point.

We have to remember that the early Christians were very sure that Jesus would be coming back any day, they never expected 2,000 years to go by with no sign of the Second Coming. Despite their frequently asking, Jesus never told the disciples when his Second Coming would be. (God speaks to humanity, and us individually, in ways we can understand at the point in salvation history, or our lives, he is speaking to us.) He did tell his apostles that no one knows the day nor the time, so to always be ready. If he told them they had at least 2,000 years, I am thinking the sense of urgency needed to begin building the Church would've been a little lacking! So, the early disciples and the early Church expected Jesus' imminent return, as Paul alludes to here. This helped them get through their sufferings and persecutions, and grow the Church. History has taught us that Jesus did not mean that he would be returning right away. But everything Paul says can help all of humanity, every one of us, as we suffer through the trials and persecutions of life. This is the reason Christians are always to be joyful and hopeful, even in the midst of suffering - we know that our Savior has saved us from eternal death, and will come again to bring us to eternal life!

I have been lately thinking a lot about the final judgment. As I have said before, the lessons of the Bible can be applied to humanity as a whole, but also to us individually. We all have both good and evil in us. We are all fallen sinners. Jesus' message to Saint Faustina was about his unfathomable mercy for even the most hardened of sinners, and his mercy is something I have felt more than once in my life. I want everyone to feel it! I don't want anyone to suffer eternally! So, trusting in his mercy for all of us, I like to focus not on some sense of schadenfreude that people who have hurt me will one day be punished. I try, instead, to look at the last judgment as my individual final judgment. I imagine myself facing Jesus, with no lies (even those I tell myself), and no one else to hide behind. He sees me; he knows me; he asks me to let him separate my sheep from my goat. To let him cut out the evil that is in me, and kill it along with with his own death. He wants to take me with him to heaven, but I can't bring the evil that is in me, so will I let him take it from me?

I think of it a lot like C.S. Lewis described it in The Great Divorce, we all have something we're clinging to, some disordered part of our nature that is so much a part of ourselves, we may not even realize it, but we have to be willing to let it go, to let Jesus redeem it. Each one of us has these things, but the ones who will not let Jesus, the merciful judge, kill that part of us through his sacrifice are, in fact, slaves to our sin, and so we choose to be a goat, we choose hell. This is how I see my own personal final judgment, and I hope that I pass the test, that I let go of my inner goat.