Patristic Tradition
 
 
 
 
 

About the Dreadful Judgement Seat ( 22.02.2009 )

According to Saint Simeon the New Theologian, “for those who became children of light and sons of the day to come, for those who always walk in the lightness, the Judgement Day will never come, because they are always with God and in God. Thus, the Judgement Day will never be announced to those who are already lit up with the light of God, but the Judgement Day will be suddenly opened to those who live in the darkness of passions, to those who live the life according to this world, to those who are attached to fallen treasures. The Judgement Day will come to them in a stunning jiff and unexpectedly, for them it will be horrible like unbearable fire.”

The light of God becomes the principle of our consciousness: we recognise God in it, and we meet ourselves in it. It examines the depths of the being that unites with God. It presents the judgement of God to our being, before the Judgement Day. Because, according to Saint Simeon, two judgements exist. The first one happens here, on the earth. It’s a judgement for salvation. And the other one, after the end of the world, for judgement itself.

“In our present life, as we enter the light of God through the act of freely repentance and by our own will, we are accused and judged. However, through the love of our God and through His mercy, such accusation happens in secrecy, in the depths of our souls, in order of our purification and forgiveness of sins.

Then, God only and we only may see the depth of our hearts. Those who experience this kind of judgement in their earthly life, shouldn’t be frighten of any other examination, while those who doesn’t accept to reach the light of God while here, in this life, and to be accused and judged here, in this earthly life, to those who hate the light of God, the Second Coming of Christ will discover the light, which for now stays hidden, and will explain everything which was hidden in secrets. All that we hide today, never wanting to uncover the bottom of our heart in repentance, will be opened then in the light, in front of the face of God, in front of the whole universe, and all that we are in reality will be openly unveiled.”

The full consciousness in all of us, will be realised in the light of God, at the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, it will not be a consciousness, which is freely opening by grace, and which is freely opening in harmony with the will of God. It will be a consciousness, which comes from outside. Which is opening in the personality of anyone against his own will, a light, which unites externally with the beings, out of grace… The love of God will become unbearable pain and torment for those who never acquired the love in themselves – according to Saint Maximus the Confessor.   

St. Isaac from Syria teaches that ”those who will find themselves in the hell, will be whipped with the whip of love. How bitter and cruel this torture with love will be for them! Those who understood that they were sinful against love, suffer bigger pain than the pain coming out from the most horrible tortures. The pain that overcomes the heart, which doesn’t have love, is older than any other pain. It is wrong to claim that the sinners are deprived of God’s love in the hell… But, love acts in two ways, two different ways – it is suffering for those sentenced, but it is joy for those blessed in God.”