NOVEMBER 10^th 2013. THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Luke 20:27-38

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

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Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

THIS WEEK OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS ARE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES AS THEY COME TO TERMS WITH THE TERRIBLE TYPHOON. LORD, BLESS THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES AND COME TO THEIR AID.

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GOSPEL                   Luke 20:27-38

Some Sadducees-those who say that there is no resurrection-approached him and they put this question to him, 'Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man's married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers. The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died.  Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?'

Jesus replied, 'The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.'

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The Gospel presents us with the Sadducees, stalwarts of religion who do not believe in eternal life! Is it possible to be religious and yet not believe in eternity? Yes! Much of our approaches towards religion are preoccupied with things that do not endure. Sometimes we treat Jesus as if he were merely someone who espoused a social doctrine or human philosophy. Belief in the resurrection, though, is not just something that concerns life after death. It is something that transforms the acts we do here and now. If I do an act in the light of eternity then it will have a completely different character than the same act done only for its worldly consequences.

            The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, so they presented Jesus with the story of the woman who married seven times. Which of these men will be her husband in the afterlife?  The problem with the Sadducees is that they make a very human vision of marriage into an absolute thing. This human category is not compatible with an eternal kingdom, so they dismiss the reality of the eternal kingdom! Jesus does the complete opposite. He revolutionises marriage by viewing it in the light of the eternal kingdom. Marriage is not an institution that exists for its own sake. It is a means of sanctification for the spouses. Children of the eternal kingdom do not marry for their own motives nor for worldly gain. They are like angels of heaven. Angel means “sent”. Children of the kingdom have a mission. They are sent from God to communicate his life to others. To live in the light of the resurrection is to truly alive here and now.

Is it possible to be “religious” and not believe in eternal life? Yes!

The Sadducees were in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem and were very close to the members of the priestly class. They were extremely powerful at the time of Jesus and had a distinctive vision of life and particular interpretation of the Scriptures. The attitude of the Sadducees is extremely relevant to us today because it can be found lurking within our attitude towards the Christian faith. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection and yet managed to construct a religious system that incorporated this denial of the existence of the afterlife. They upheld the law of Moses and maintained all of the rituals of the Old Testament. But their entire relationship with God was oriented towards this life here and now. There was no other life except this life. The only thing that counted, therefore, was justice in the here and now. Religion was purely at the service of a life that had no future. To us today it might seem inconceivable to construct a religion that denies the afterlife. Yet this exclusive focus on the present is hidden in many approaches to the faith that are influential today.

There is a perpetual temptation to reduce Christianity to a social doctrine that is primarily concerned with our earthly life

Is it possible to speak of Christianity without the resurrection? Can one preach the Gospel without mentioning eternal life or Paradise? Unfortunately, yes! There is a constant temptation to reduce Christianity to social ethics, justice, good works, or personal coherence. Some people do not find it convenient or comfortable to reflect on the fact that every Christian act has a relationship with eternity, a relationship with the resurrection. This is not merely to speak about life after death, but the life we are living right now. St Paul dedicated an entire chapter (fifteen) of his letter to the Corinthians to the issue of the resurrection. He asked his readers how they could sustain that there was no resurrection of the dead. If we follow Christ only for what can be achieved in this life then we are to be pitied above all human beings, Paul says. Such a “Christianity” is merely a human philosophy, not something that transcends the flesh. If the creed we profess is something that is only concerned with this life here and now, then our faith is merely a way of patching up the gaping shortcomings in our earthly being. There is no such thing as the supernatural, no such thing as true novelty, or real transcendence. Jesus is merely someone who gives us an indication of how we should live.

The resurrection transforms the life we are living right now

The resurrection is not simply something we experience after death. It also transforms the life we are living right now. The resurrection is the victory over the abyss that we already experience in our lives in every moment. Belief in the resurrection is essential for every single act of authentic Christian love.

The Saduccees attribute absolute value to a very worldly vision of marriage. Jesus, instead, revolutionizes the vision of marriage by considering it in the light of the eternal kingdom.

Jesus gives no credence to the absurd story proposed by the Sadducees. Seven brothers die one after the other, each marrying the “black widow” immediately before their demise. Then the Sadducees present the killer punch: if there is really a life after death, who will be the woman’s husband in paradise? Any force this story has comes only from the human categories that the Sadducees mistakenly consider to have absolute value. Jesus asks how the categories of this world can be applied in a world that transcends the abyss of death. In another text, Jesus speaks of a banquet to which all are invited but many refuse to come because they are busy with trivial things. All of us are preoccupied with trivial things. We live for things that do not endure, things that do not go beyond death. Instead, the children that are worthy of the kingdom that endures beyond death do not take husbands or wives, Jesus tells us. Is Jesus endorsing a prescription of celibacy for all? No, the Lord Jesus is saying something much more profound here. St Paul speaks of a new vision of matrimony in which the spouses do not marry each other on their own initiatives and for their own motives. Matrimony becomes a new way to sanctification for those who have been baptized. The goal of marriage is eternal life! The type of marriage referred to by the Sadducees is a human category that makes no sense in heaven. So they respond by dismissing the reality of heaven! But it is the understanding of marriage that must be transformed in the light of the reality of heaven! I take a spouse, not for myself, but as part of my journey towards heaven. My journey now involves loving my spouse and creating a family. The creation of a family or a society without the resurrection is something entirely different. The focus is on how things are here and now in the material sense. This focus prevents me from engaging in acts of true self-giving.  To act according to heaven is to live a completely different life altogether. The indissolubility of marriage is not properly conceivable without the resurrection, without the conviction that the void can be ultimately overcome. This void makes itself felt in every human relationship sooner or later and that is why the belief in the resurrection is fundamental for overcoming it.

Jesus’ vision of marriage in the light of the eternal kingdom

These children who have been reborn from above live another kind of relationship. They do not live according to the flesh. Death is not their ultimate horizon and in this sense they live like the angels. When we see the frescoes of Michelangelo we see a black line around each of the figures, delineating them. The children of the kingdom do not have this black line around them. Death is not the last word. The angels are the messengers of God. To live like the angels is to live like someone who has been sent with a message, someone with a mission. How different it is to live marriage in order to satisfy one’s hunger for affection! Instead the children of heaven live like people who have been sent, saying the words that the Lord wishes to communicate to the world. To live according to the resurrection is to live as a servant of the God of the living. In the end the real litmus test is not how much worldly goods we possess but whether we are truly alive or not.