Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Old Testament lesson from Exodus contains some terribly vivid descriptions of God’s power.

As the Israelites gather at the base of Mt. Sinai, and as Moses ascends the mountain to receive God’s commandments, God descends on the mountain in an awesome display. Smoke, like the smoke of a kiln, rises and the mountain shakes violently. Along with these dismaying phenomena, trumpet blasts grow louder and louder.

This description also reminds me of the text of the Dies Irae, that medieval sequence hymn used at funeral masses until the 20th century. In this text, the trumpet sounds across the entire world to summon those who are judged.

I suppose this text expresses some of the shared feelings of dread at meeting God and discovering the very real power differential. Furthermore, the heightened sense of dread associated with judgement seems common to both.

One need go no further than the ceiling of any Baroque church in Rome to see the collective Western imaginings of the final judgment day. In Eastern iconography, at least that which I’ve seen, the emphasis seems to be on the individual soul being judged in the presence of a great cloud of witnesses—less terrible, but still ultimately weighty.

A particularly modern, cinematic take on the whole idea is also one that I find beautiful and thought-provoking is a rather spacey sequence from Terrence Mallick’s 2011 film, The Tree of Life, with a short verse from the Dies Irae. This Lacrimosa movement from Zbignew Preisner’s requiem setting describes a tearful final judgement. The English translation goes like this:

Tearful will be that day,
on which from the glowing embers will arise
the guilty man who is to be judged:
Then spare him, O God.

This scene is supposed to help us inhabit the position of Job, who asks God why bad things happen, and who eventually closes his mouth. Perhaps this is also a place from which to contemplate the final judgement.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin