Sunday Reading Reflection - There Will Be A Test

When you were in school, did you ever wish your professor would've told you exactly what questions would be on the final exam? And how about the professor actually giving you the answers ahead of time?

Well, that's what Jesus gives us in today's Gospel:

GospelMt 25:31-46 Jesus said to his disciples:"When the Son of Man comes in his glory,and all the angels with him,he will sit upon his glorious throne,and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another,as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the king will say to those on his right,'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

What's the test?

Jesus will ask us if, when he:

hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’
Jesus goes on to explain that we do these things to/for Him when we do them to/for "one of the least brothers of mine."

The late Holy Father Pope John Paul II took the opportunity of his very fist encyclical, Repemptor Hominis, to reinforce the continuing significance and necessity of this Gospel passage:

This eschatological scene must always be "applied" to man's history; it must always be made the "measure" for human acts as an essential outline for an examination of conscience by each and every one: "I was hungry and you gave me no food ... naked and you did not clothe me... in prison and you did not visit me"109. These words become charged with even stronger warning, when we think that, instead of bread and cultural aid, the new States and nations awakening to independent life are being offered, sometimes in abundance, modern weapons and means of destruction placed at the service of armed conflicts and wars that are not so much a requirement for defending their íust rights and their sovereignty but rather a form of chauvinism, imperialism, and neocolonialism of one kind or another. We all know well that the areas of misery and hunger on our globe could have been made fertile in a short time, if the gigantic investments for armaments at the service of war and destruction had been changed into investments for food at the service of life.

So, those are the people who go to Heaven, what do you have to do to go to Hell?

Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed,into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

For I was hungry and you gave me no food,

I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

a stranger and you gave me no welcome,

naked and you gave me no clothing,

ill and in prison, and you did not care for me,

or you voted for Barack Obama in 2008.'*

And these will go off to eternal punishment,but the righteous to eternal life."

* This verse appears only in the Bibles of the GOPriests.