Today we recall how, at the beginning of the liturgical year, the Church prepared us for the first coming of Christ who brings us salvation. Two weeks from the end of the year, she prepares us for the second coming, the one in which the final and definitive word will be pronounced over each one of us.

In the face of today's Gospel, we can think “What a long term you are giving me,” but “He is near” (Mk 13:29). And yet, in our society, it is annoying -even incorrect- to allude to death. However, we cannot speak of resurrection without thinking that we must die. The end of the world comes for each of us on the day we die, when the time given to us to choose will end. The Gospel is always Good News, and the God of Christ is the God of Life: why this fear; perhaps because of our lack of hope?

Faced with the immediacy of this judgment, we must learn to become severe judges, not of others, but of ourselves. We must not fall into the trap of self-justification, relativism or “I don’t see it that way”... Jesus Christ gives us through the Church and, with Him, the means and resources so that this universal judgment is not the day of our condemnation, but a very interesting spectacle, in which, at last, the most hidden truths of the conflicts that have so tormented men will be made public.

The Church announces that we have a savior, Christ, the Lord. Less fear and more coherence in our actions with what we believe! St. J.H. Newman said ”When we come into God's presence, we shall be asked two things, whether we were in the Church, and whether we worked in the Church. Everything else is worthless.” The Church does not only teach us a way of dying, but a way of living in order to be resurrected. For what she preaches is not her message, but that of the One whose word is the source of life. Only from this hope will we face God's judgment with serenity.