FOOL!

“But God said to him: Thou fool, this night your soul will be required of you! And the things you have acquired, whose will they be?”

(St. Luke 12.20)

To whom is God speaking? For some who read this now … yes, at this very moment … the answers is — you! Certainly it will one day be you. 100%.

Your priorities suddenly become quite different, yes?

All your pretensions about the question of God’s existence — about Heaven and Hell — and about the way you have lived your life — have come to this: the betrayal of reality by pretensions that what must be will not be  — and will not come to your door. Not this night.

The obituaries are filled, row by row, each day by those whose pretensions — like yours — came to an abrupt end and reality could be eluded no longer. Don’t believe me?  Open tomorrow’s paper — if you are not in it.

There will be an accounting — and you think that somehow you alone will be exempt from it.

Fool!

Do I say this to frighten you?

No.

God Himself said it — to save you!

Think on it for a moment — and return to God from Whom we should have never strayed.  He is the only One to save you from the Lake of Fire that is called the Second Death ¹ which many of us so richly deserve. Return to the Church that baptized you, that nourished you with the Sacraments, and that
one day will bury you.

The hour is appointed, and however untimely death is, she is never late — and, strange to say, neither will you be.

I tell you nothing new, nothing that you have not already known — or at least suspected — and for all your bravado you move inexorably toward it.

“Tomorrow” is a conjecture at best.   Think on that, too.

God is waiting. The next move is yours — and it may be your last.

You will not hear this from the ambo. Sadly it is likely that you have not heard it since Vatican II. But let it be said, that we may be without excuse: “Now is the acceptable time.” (2 Cor. 6.2)

For Heaven’s sake — and yours — seize it!
 

Fools that we are, let us not despair

To despair of the saving love of God is to deny God “for Whom all things are possible” (Saint Matthew 19.26)  This is the Parable of the the Vineyard (Saint Matthew 20. 1-16): — even unto the last moment of our lives on earth God’s mercy and forgiveness is open to us — but we must remember, only until the moment of death ... but not beyond it. Once we have crossed that bourne, our wills remain as they were at the time of death: what we had decided in the way of our relationship to God (either to ignore Him, dismiss Him, or to pretend that He does not exist) we enter into a new reality called eternity.

But for that reason, do not be guilty of the sin of presumption: thinking that God will save you no matter what, and therefore do as you will without fear of consequences.

God is loving, but God is also just.

Let us, then, love God: it is for that end that we were created. Not to be successful or powerful or admired by the world; not to be happy in this life (we will never be) or free from suffering. Our reason for being is to love God and to do His will — not ours.

Yes, let us fear Hell — from which Christ delivered all who turn to Him; those who for His sake deny themselves daily,  take up their Cross, and follow Him  (Saint Luke 9.23) against the raging winds of the world and unseen powers that incessantly call us to deny Him. This we must not do, for He has warned us that those who “deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in Heaven.” (Saint Matthew 10.33)

Yes, Hell is frightfully real — but so is Heaven where dwells the One Who tells us, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isaiah 1.18).

If only we turn to Him, for “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (Saint John 1.7) and “Jesus Christ, Who is the faithful witness, the first begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth, Who hath loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood” (Apocalypse 1.5)
 

We have nothing to fear — except sin

Avoid it as the deadliest poison that it is, and hope in the mercy of God. Sin is not only disobedience to God — it is death to the soul.

We have good reason to fear Hell because we do not fear sin.

Flee it, and slam the door on the face of Hell, and him who awaits those who think it folly.

To God, to Heaven — there let us fly in a hope that will not disappoint us: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2.9)

Editor
Boston Catholic Journal

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