NOTES for Mat 25:31-46
In the canon for Meatfare Sunday, or the Sunday of the Last Judgment, as today is called, there are these words: "In his own rank, monk and hierarch, old and young, slave and master will be examined; widow and maiden will be set right; and then woe to all who did not have a blameless life. Your unbribed judgment, Your unconcealed tribunal: no clever speech, no orator's art, no witness's supposition can turn away what is righteous; for in You, O God, all hidden things stand revealed." These words seem more terrible and more saving than all the other words about worms and fire. This is something of enormous importance: only righteous testimony, and not any words, will be accepted for consideration. Very often now, among believing intellectuals, it is common to say that they do not believe in hell. One may not believe in it if one has never been there; but if one has been there, belief is no longer the issue. One of our older contemporaries, a holy martyr, said that hell is when all around there is I-I-I, as in a mirrored room ("no one knocks at my door; only mirror dreams of mirror," A. Akhmatova), and paradise is when all around there is you-you-you. And this is a given: there are two such ultimate points. Either we give to the least of these, or we do not; either "I" exists for us, or "you" does. There is no escaping or getting away from this. And being in such a mirrored room is truly terribly painful; worms and pans of boiling oil hardly compare. Only few people resolve this torment by leaving that mirrored room. Most prefer simply to hang it with various cozy things and live without suffering very much, except sometimes for anxious thoughts that someone will break in and tear it all down again... but it is so easy to push this torment away by thinking about an ever stronger lock.