MORE ON THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT

As pointed out in a previous article ("Is There Still A Particular Judgment?" published in The Wanderer, July 3, 2014, p. 8B), the:

"silence regarding this particular dogma from all too many pulpits together with funeral Masses that focus on celebrating the life of the deceased and are replete with eulogies (amounting to instant canonization) have tended to make the Particular Judgment disappear from the mental horizon of too many Catholics, who steeped in sin, sit comfortably in the pews of their parishes."

Suppressed, in fact, in the life of too many parishes, is the truth that all must give at death an accounting to God of their lives to receive eternal bliss or damnation. Hardly mentioned is the awesome nature of the soul's appearing before the tribunal or Judgment seat of Christ, the King of Glory, to satisfy God's justice.

Why the Church prays for the dead, the possibility of the soul's need for cleansing or purification in Purgatory, and the soul's final destiny in Heaven or Hell, are rarely explained to the Catholics and non-Catholics who come to mourn.

The somber and serious ethos of a Mass offered for the deceased is replaced by the "once saved, always saved" music of Amazing Grace or the cheery and optimistic tunes of Marty Haugen and David Haas. The homily of the priest in his white vestments delivers the presumptuous assurance that all will eventually meet the deceased in the joy of Heaven.

As a friend recently noted:

"The funeral Masses are the worst that I have attended. Rarely do they seem to me to reflect the mystery of death and the Church's theology of death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Excepting the actual liturgical prayers for the dead, there is often failure to stress the obligation for individuals present at the Mass to pray for the deceased who may be suffering for his sins in Purgatory. Eastern Orthodox attending our funeral Masses leave especially appalled at the humdrum, banal, superficial, and secularized character of such poorly celebrated Masses stripped of mystery."

Yet, as also pointed out in the previous article, Eastern Orthodoxy has also suffered a diminished sense of the Particular Judgment in the consciences of its faithful by the embracing of serious doctrinal error. While the Catholic Church in its doctrinal development under the guidance of the Holy Spirit has clarified its eschatological teaching (left vague and confused by early writers and even Fathers), the Eastern Orthodox have no clear official teaching on the souls of the saints being in Heaven. They remain confused and divided regarding:

1. The existence of a Particular Judgment;
2. whether the souls of the just enter Heaven immediately or after the Resurrection of the body;
3. whether the souls of the just indeed see the Essence of God Himself in the Beatific Vision; and
4. even whether (despite their own liturgical prayers for the deceased) there is an intermediate state for souls needing purification (Purgatory).

Some of their theologians say there are no souls in Heaven or Hell, this occurring only with the Last Judgment. Other Orthodox who are followers of the 14th-century theologian Gregory Palamas may admit that the souls of the saints are in Heaven (Paradise) but see rather the Divine Energies of God, not His Triune Essence. That the saints in Heaven are granted the Beatific Vision was infallibly defined by Pope Benedict XII in Benedictus Deus (1336).

The incoherence and variations in Orthodox teaching are further compounded by the fact that some of their theologians deny that there can be any development of doctrine in Church teaching. Nevertheless, the Catholic doctrine has had its strong defenders among those Orthodox most conversant with Tradition. Thus, among the most distinguished of 19th-century Russian Orthodox theologians, the Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, wrote in his 19th-century Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (vol. II):

"[The Church believes] the doctrine that, upon the death of a man a judgment takes place, known as the Particular Judgment in contrast to the General, which is to be at the end of the world."

He quotes among other authorities the testimony of one of the most important Russian saints, Demetrius of Rostov (1709), whose sentiments provide the theological ethos for understanding the nature of every funeral Mass offered for the deceased:

"It is meet for every one of us on every day and at every hour to look for the unknown hour of the ending of our lives, and to be ready for departing; for there will be a terrible judgment for each one of us, prior to the general terrible judgment...

“Judgment is twofold: particular and general. A particular judgment is one which every man, dying, has, since he will then see all of his own deeds. We look for every day and every hour the coming of the Lord to us, but not yet that terrible [Second] Coming again, with which He will come to judge the living and the dead and to reward each of his deeds; we do not await at every hour that time, in which (by the words of Peter the Apostle) the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up (2 Peter 3:10), but await, each one, the hour of our own death, in which the judgment of God will come to take our souls from our bodies, in which hour there will be for each a particular trial about that which we have done; we await that hour at every hour as the Lord Himself, protecting us, taught in the Gospel:

"Be ye therefore ready also; for the Son of man comes at an hour when ye think not" (Luke 12:40).

"Every requiem or funeral Mass provides a grace-filled opportunity for everyone in attendance to be mindful that he has to "work out his own salvation in fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12) and to beg Christ, the Lord of Majesty and Glory, the Alpha and Omega, that the deceased may have found mercy and salvation."

 

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