Today’s Gospel Reading, from the last half of Mt. 19: 23-30, contains a mystery we should try to solve:
“Then Peter said to him in reply, “We have given up everything and followed you. What will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, I say to you that you who have followed me, in the new age, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of glory, will yourselves sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
Peter put into words the thoughts of every Catholic, whether at the altar or in the pews. “What’s in it for us?”
Jesus made it clear. The Twelve Apostles get a lot! Each one will be appointed Judge over every soul from one of Israel’s tribes. Catholic Fundamentalism believes that nearly all Caucasian/European/American people are descended genetically, in some degree, from The Tribes. Most of our ancestors were in the Ten Northern Tribes were deported into the North in 720 BC. They migrated throughout Europe and Asia as Scythians, Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Danites, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Frisians, Brahmins, Lombards, Normans, and all the other peoples who spread through Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas for two thousand years.
Many of us are, to some degree, genetically descended from The Tribes. We will, as Jesus said, stand before one of the Disciples at Judgment to be judged.
Hope we haven’t given them a reason to dislike us.
We from The Tribes are not he only ones who will be there. Another mystery: Who judges Catholic souls not descended from The Tribes? St. Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, may judge those not from the Tribes.
Another mystery. Who judges the tribes of Ephiram and Manassas, the Tribes assigned to the two sons of Joseph?
