Do you ever think about the final judgment? I do. And I know that this is not a very popular topic. We all presume that after we die, we will all go straight to Heaven, and that of course would be wonderful. But the Gospel readings in several places remind us that before the doors to Heaven will be opened to us, first we need to be judged by God. I find it interesting that there is nothing in the Gospel readings that states that we will be judged by the amount of time we spent in church or in prayer. We won’t be judged by how many of the sacraments have we received, nor by how many commandments we know by heart, and not by how many Bible verses we memorized. But we will be judged based on our relationship to others. We know that we should love God and then our neighbor. But today Jesus reminds us that we need to be careful even before we judge others, because based on how we judge, God will judge us also. “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
