This is the Sunday of the Last Judgement. A day will come when all of us will stand before God, each person bringing his own harvest and, as the Book of Revelation tells us, every kingdom, every nation bringing its glory and also its shame.
On that day the time for faith will be over, because faith is certainty about things unseen, and on that day, in the blinding glory of God, we will see;
we will see Him as He sees us, we will know Him as He knows us. And the time for hope will be over, because hope is expectation, and on that day all things will have been fulfilled;
it will be the eighth day, the last day, the last day of time, the last day of becoming;
it will be the first day of eternity.
And on that threshold we shall stand;
what are we going to bring?
What will be the fruit of a whole life, of each of us singly, of all of us in our togetherness?
Not as a crowd of individuals unrelated to each other, but as a living body of people who have all, all been baptised into Christ, into unity, into oneness, who are all called by the power of the Holy Spirit to be the only-begotten son of God in the Only-begotten Son of God — what are we going to bring then?
The only thing that can survive, faith and hope being of the past, will be love.
At the end of time, when all creation reaches the fullness of its existence, when man reaches its fullness,
all mankind, in union with the Only Begotten Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will become the only begotten son of God
(Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh).
We know from the Epistle of the Apostle Peter that our human calling (as it is reflected on the rest of the creature – we will think further)
is not only to know God, not only to worship Him, not only to serve Him, not only to tremble before Him, not only to love Him, but ultimately to become partakers of the Divine nature
(2 Pet. 1:4),
that is, to partake of God in such a way that the Divine nature is instilled in us, we become like Christ in this respect. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons in one of his writings used a remarkable and perhaps even terrible, in any case majestic, expression. He says that at the end of time, when all creation reaches the fullness of its existence, when man reaches its fullness,
all mankind, in union with the Only Begotten Son of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, will become the only begotten son of God.
This is our ultimate calling.
