Sunday, November 10, 2013 Thirtieth-second Sunday in Ordinary Time HE IS THE GOD OF THE LIVING, NOT OF THE DEAD Luke 20:27-38 (Good News Translation) 27 Then some Sadducees, who say that people will not rise from death, came to Jesus and said, 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote this law for us: “If a man dies and leaves a wife but no children, that mans brother must marry the widow so that they can have children who will be considered the dead mans children.” 29 Once there were seven brothers; the oldest got married and died without having children. 30 Then the second one married the woman, 31 and then the third. The same thing happened to all seven—they died without having children. 32 Last of all, the woman died. 33 Now, on the day when the dead rise to life, whose wife will she be? All seven of them had married her. ” 34 Jesus answered them, “The men and women of this age marry, 35 but the men and women who are worthy to rise from death and live in the age to come will not then marry. 36 They will be like angels and cannot die. They are the children of God, because they have risen from death. 37 And Moses clearly proves that the dead are raised to life. In the passage about the burning bush he speaks of the Lord as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” 38 He is the God of the living, not of the dead, for to him all are alive. ” Other Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Lectio The liturgical year is coming to an end, and so is Luke’s Gospel, which has been the backbone of cycle C. For Jesus, too, the end is close at hand. His time has come to face the fulfilment of his mission through death… and resurrection. After his arrival in Jerusalem (Luke 19:28) and his entry amid popular acclaim, the evangelist depicts Jesus’ activity there as a series of confrontations with the religious authorities. From the cleansing of the Temple (19:45-46), the tone of his parables and arguments with the high priests, the teachers of the Law, the Pharisees and Sadducees, there is a building crescendo, the result of which will be the final decision of his enemies: “The chief priests and the teachers of the Law were afraid of the people, and so they were trying to find a way of putting Jesus to death secretly” (Luke 22:2). It is the moment to think about his immediate and final fate. The idea of life after death, or some kind of resurrection and eternal life, took a long time to develop in Israel. Except for Isaiah 26:19 and Job 19:26-27, the passage from Maccabees that we read today is perhaps the earliest and clearest statement about resurrection in the whole Old Testament. We must take into account that this was written in the second century before Christ. That there was not a common, well defined doctrine about resurrection is quite clear when we see that even in Jesus’ time, one of the tenets of the sect of the Sadducees was their opposition to it. It is in this ideological context and in this historical moment that we must place the discussion between Jesus and the Sadducees. For his opponents, it is a mere question raised to put Jesus to the test and, in a sense, ridicule both him and the Pharisees, who sustained the idea of the resurrection of the body after death. But for Jesus, there is more than a theological issue. The question makes him think of his own immediate fate, and leads him to convey a new dimension of God and a new conception of afterlife to those who hear him. According to Jesus’ reasoning, it is a mistake to consider afterlife, life after resurrection, as if it were a mere returning to daily life, having to follow the same rules and commandments humans had before death. It will be a new dimension, which Jesus compares with the condition of angels. So there is no point in worrying about descendants to guarantee a man’s survival. The law of Levirate does not apply anymore so the argument of the Sadducees is proved void and false. But there is something more important still. When speaking about the resurrection, Jesus does not mention the immortality of souls, or any kind of human spiritual quality concerning life after death. He underlines, on the contrary, the divine quality of love. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all of them are alive because God has loved them and his love goes beyond any boundary, even the frontier which divides life and death. Jesus is thus laying the foundation for the theology Paul will develop later and which John will express with simple, limited words. “God is love,” and those who enter in the realm of love, enter also into the realm of God, the world of the new life in Christ. Even if it is only a foreshadowing of our own resurrection, “we know that we have left death and come over into life; we know it because we love others” (1 John 3:14). Meditatio Whenever we recite the Apostles’ Creed, we proclaim that we believe in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting;” or, if we use the Nicene Creed, we say that “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” That is our liturgical practice, repeated again and again in our Christian life. Does it really represent what we believe? What idea do we have about our own resurrection? How do we conceive of life after death? Is hope our main feeling when facing death? As you may see, the list of questions is too long. It could be reduced to a very simple one: do we believe, do we trust in the Risen Christ, the giver of life? Oratio Pray for those who look at death as a black, deep hole, where hope and sense are swallowed up: that the Risen Christ may dispel their doubts and fears and fill them with hope. Pray for those who have lost their loved ones: that the hope of rising again in Christ may help them find comfort in their grief. Let us pray for ourselves: that the gift of hope in the Risen Christ may help us overcome our fears and be witnesses of his resurrection. Contemplatio Two short passages from Paul can provide us with material to rethink our attitude when facing death and resurrection. For the apostle, confidence at any time, in any circumstance, is the only way in which a Christian may face any event, both in life and in death. God’s love, as we saw above, pervades everything and embraces everyone who trusts in him. Read in peaceful silence these two passages from the letter to the Romans: 8:31-39 and 14:7-9. Reflections written by Rev. Fr. Mariano Perrón Roman Catholic priest Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 03:05:22 +0000
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