When Christ returns with power as Judge of the living and the dead: (1) He will give His people to the Father, and (2) the Church will then reach perfection and enter into the fullness of God.

1. When Christ returns with power as Judge of the living and the dead, He will give His people to the Father.

The great event of the Second Coming of our Lord in power and glory will be, at the same time, the judgment and the raising of the dead in their bodies.

When Jesus has subjected all things to Himself, He will deliver His dominion to the Father. “Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24). United to man through Jesus Christ, the whole creation shares in His continual sacrifice and perfect worship of the Father in the Holy Spirit. St. Paul says: “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

2. When Christ returns with power as Judge of the living and the dead, the Church will then reach perfection and enter into the fullness of God.

Death is the beginning of our resurrection. The particular judgment places the individual soul in its proper eternal setting. This placement is confirmed in the Last Judgment. Heaven and Hell need, for their completion, the Second Coming of Christ. By raising up the bodies of mankind, Jesus will restore to both the blessed and the lost, the human condition they once had by giving them bodies which correspond to their state. The soul will demand its body. The new humanity requires fulfillment by the resurrection of the bodies of all mankind. Only then will the Church reach perfection and enter into the fullness of God.