The Last Judgment

The final and universal judgment of Christ after the general resurrection: judgment according to works, whose criterion is love and mercy (Matthew 25); and the great icon of the Last Judgment, with its theology, together with Meatfare Sunday — the Sunday of the Last Judgment — on which the Church sets the judgment before the eyes of the faithful at the threshold of Great Lent.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

This section treats the final judgment confessed in the Creed, distinguishing it from the particular judgment (Section 02) as the definitive and irrevocable verdict rendered on the whole person, soul and body reunited. Its two files hold together the biblical teaching and its liturgical-iconographic expression: the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, in which judgment turns on mercy shown to “the least of these”; and the Last Judgment icon and the Sunday of the Last Judgment, through which the tradition catechizes the faithful in the last things not as abstraction but as the near horizon of the ascetic season of Lent.

Files

• matthew-25-and-judgment-by-love.md — the universal judgment; the criterion of love and mercy; judgment by works and the role of grace; the revelatory character of the judgment.
• the-last-judgment-icon-and-meatfare.md — the iconography and theology of the Last Judgment; Meatfare Sunday and its place in the pre-Lenten cycle.

See Also

• The Second Coming and the Resurrection — the resurrection that precedes the judgment
• The Particular Judgment and the Intermediate State — the preliminary judgment the final judgment completes
• Heaven, Hell, and the River of Fire — the two receptions of the one divine love the judgment reveals