Judgment of the nations

“What you did to the least, you did to me.”
Matthew 25: 40

Fr. John Kavanaugh summed up this parable of the Last Judgment very well:

In human mayhem, we dismember the body of Christ.

It’s not a mere failure to respond to human need, it’s a failure to respond to Christ Jesus.

This is a judgment not just of individuals. Jesus presents it as a judgment of the nations.

That makes things really problematic for us North Americans.

Pope John Paul II put it well at a Mass in Canada in 1984:

…in the light of Christ’s words, the poor South will judge the opulent North. And poor people and poor nations — poor in different ways, not only lacking food but deprived of freedom and other human rights — will be judging those who snatch away their possessions, accumulating for themselves the imperialist monopoly of economic and political predominance at the expense of others.

When will these words be taken seriously by my native land, the United States?