Thursday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time, November 6, 2025

Romans 14, 7-12

Brothers and sisters: None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why then do you judge your brother or sister? Or you, why do you look down on your brother or sister? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God; for it is written:  As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.  So then each of us shall give an account of himself to God.

St. Paul speaks in this passage with a serenity that could only come from one who has died to himself.  He looks out over the divisions that troubled the early Church—questions about dietary customs, holy days, and moral scruples—and reduces all the noise to one clear note: none of us lives for himself, and no one dies for himself.  The Christian is no longer a solitary being drifting through the world on his own purposes.  He has been claimed.  Life and death alike have been seized by Christ and folded into His dominion of love.

This is, at heart, the end of self-ownership.  The believer cannot say, “My life is my own,” nor can he say, “My death is mine to choose.”  Both belong to Another, and in that belonging lies our peace.  For to live for the Lord means that every ordinary act—eating, working, resting, suffering—becomes a liturgy of love offered to Him.  To die for the Lord means that even our dissolution is consecrated: our passing from this world becomes an act of obedience through which He remains Lord over us still.  Paul’s words erase the boundary between life and death; in both, Christ reigns, and we remain His.

The Apostle then presses the logic of that belonging into our relationships with one another: “Why then do you judge your brother or sister?”  If no one lives for himself, then no one stands on his own.  To judge another harshly is to usurp the Lord’s prerogative — to claim mastery over a soul that belongs not to us but to him.  Each Christian, even the weakest or most erring, is the Lord’s possession, sealed with His blood.  To despise that person is to despise the one who purchased them.  It is a subtle but profound form of impiety, for it divides what Christ has made one.

Paul anchors his appeal in the certainty of judgment: “We shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.”  This is not meant to terrify, but to awaken reverence.  Before that tribunal there will be no comparisons, no excuses, no disguises.  Each will give an account not of his neighbor’s conscience but of his own.  The Greek term bēma, “judgment seat,” evokes the raised platform from which a ruler rendered verdicts.  Christ Himself now occupies that place—not as a distant emperor, but as the Lord who died and rose precisely that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.  The one who will judge us is the same who loved us unto death.

Paul crowns his reasoning with a line from Isaiah: “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bend before me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”  The vision is universal: all creation, once scattered by pride, will bend toward its center in adoration.  To “bend the knee” is not only to confess divine sovereignty, but to recognize that the final word over every human story is praise.  Even the humblest life, lived in fidelity, will be revealed as a hymn.

When Paul concludes, “Each of us shall give an account of himself to God,” he restores the dignity of personal responsibility.  We cannot hide behind the failings of others, nor condemn them to shield ourselves.  Each heart stands alone before Mercy, yet not forsaken — because the one before whom we stand is also the one within whom we live and die.

In these few verses, Paul sketches the entire drama of Christian existence: belonging to Christ, reverencing our brethren, and preparing to meet Him who is both Judge and Savior.  To live in this awareness is already to begin that final act of praise in which every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord — to the glory of God the Father.