547 part v: daily meditations to pieces; and the space between shoulder blades was so exposed that it awakened dread in the onlookers and moved to tears those reflecting on it. If you hold your tears back, if you keep indulging your flesh, then you are like as hard and rough as a rock and the most wretched of men. Mourn, therefore, mourn and lament not so much the scourging itself of the Savior as the cause of the scourging; and make a serious effort in the future not to scourge Him more severely with your sins.280 [f.179r] 6. WEDNESDAY EVENING On the ultimate judgment day and preceding signs. 1. Consider that each of us has to appear twice before the Supreme Judge: at first in the individual judgment, which happens after each person’s death; and the second time in the general judgment, which Christ the Lord shall arrange in the valley of Josaphat (cf. Jl 3:2, 12), as common opinion proclaims, when the world would be coming to an end and totally destroyed, according to what the king-psalmist says in his prophecy: “He shall judge the world with justice, and the people with [H]is truth” (Ps 95:13) [DRB]. Then all men shall be there, from the first man Adam up to and including the last person that shall be born or die in the world; and the blessed from Heaven, and the purified from Purgatory and the condemned from hell, will appear flocking together to render a strict account of all their thoughts, words and deeds. 280 Maria Faustina Kowalska, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, 3rd ed. with revisions, Marian Press, Stockbridge 2009, p. 196 (#445): St. Faustina saw who scourged Jesus and with what sins: “I saw the Lord Jesus tied to a pillar, stripped of His clothes, and the scourging began immediately. I saw four men who took turns at striking the Lord with scourges. … Jesus gave me to know for what sins He subjected Himself to the scourging: these are sins of impurity. … [T]he executioners left Jesus, and other people started scourging Him; they seized the scourges and struck the Lord mercilessly. These were priests, religious men and women, and high dignitaries of the Church, which surprised me greatly. There were lay people of all ages and walks of life. All vented their malice on the innocent Jesus.”
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