Perhaps for many the terrors of death are as nothing compared with the terrors of judgement; for all that affrights us in death is found far more fully in the awful moment that succeeds it. The loneliness of death that is its chiefest horror, its most overwhelming fear - that utter separation from our life and from that part of us, our bodies, which we have come to regard as so particularly ourselves - is followed by a still more bitter separation, a more cruel divorce: for our judgement must be solitary, isolated, alone. Even the saints can do little for us, for the judgement must be righteous and just, and this means assuredly that God cannot go out of His path of justice because of the pleading even of those whom He holds dear. What else, indeed, is the judgement, as far as we can grasp it, but the naked setting of our soul as it is now at this moment in the sight of God? He knows absolutely the state of my whole being. He knows what I do not, whether I am worthy of love or hatred. To me that blinding vision may be a tremendous revelation, a rolling back of all sorts of hidden curtains with which I had shrouded my soul from my own gaze - all the little deceptions that I had practised on myself, the little ways in which I had hoodwinked my conscience and pretended to myself that I did not really think that in certain things I had done there was any great sin. Many times I had salved the conscience pricks of my heart by distinctions and devices: now in a flash these are all laid bare.
Nay, so lonely shall I be, that even the very judge may be none other than myself. To the Son, indeed, is given all judgement: He must apportion the praise and blame, the reward or punishment. Yet in that moment when the veils of ignorance and conceit are torn from my eyes, I must become awfully conscious of the pageant of my life. I can need no external voice to point out to me the evils of my life, for the loud cry of conscience itself will be the sole decisive voice required. The scenes through which we have lived will return to our remembrance, and we shall be face to face with our lives. In the accounts of many of those who have gone so close to the doors of death as almost to have had a sight of what takes place beyond them, we are repeatedly told that they have seen then the whole forgotten vision of their lives. The whole past record has defiled before them as though they sat as spectators in some theatre and watched the acting out in dumb show of every detail of another's tragedy or comedy. From manhood back through the dim reaches of childhood the vision sped; nothing was omitted or passed by, the whole appeared as it had been. Would there be any need than this for further judgement? Would not the soul itself sum up by its own loathing and distaste what it thought of this record? Deserted, therefore, even by oneself, one's pride, one's conceit, one's fond hopes that all was well - oh, the biting, piercing loneliness of that utter isolation!
Yet even so is there consolation for us. There will be One who will be to us, then, a comfort, a refuge, a hope. The very figure of the Judge will be itself the sole sight that will give us any gleam of brightness in so horrid a scene. The five great wounds - will not their light illuminate even the dark corners of stricken soul and give it hope in the weary waste of its bitter isolation? Through Him will all our good actions take on an infinite value. The comfort that He Himself has given in His own wonderful description of that day is found in the gracious text: "Inasmuch as you did it to the least of My brethren, you did it to Me." Whatever we have done good will have its reward from Him. The great doctrine of the unity of all Christians into a sacred body of which Christ is the Head, will give even in the horrors of that moment a supreme relief. All the devotion that I have shown to the saints will there have been gathered up and regarded as devotion to Him; for to a Catholic, reverence for the saints is only exhibited because they are His friends, so that in reality (as we hold) those who have shown them reverence have really been showing reverence to Christ. The kindnesses of life, the little we have done for others, will be remembered for our reward. Thus through the terrors and horrors of the awful judgement there will always be the light lit by friendship; the un swerving love that we have shown to Him who is ever faithful will not be forgotten: there can be no loneliness so long as He is there.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.