November 6th 2022.Thirty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL: Luke 20:27-38

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

 

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

 

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

 

The  Sadducees are mistaken in thinking that the life of heaven is the same kind of life as this earthly one.

The first reading recounts the heroic witness of the seven brothers in the Book of Maccabees, who endured terrible sufferings whilst maintaining their hope in eternal life.  In the second reading (from 2 Thes), St Paul too recalls the importance of the gift of hope in eternal consolation. In the Gospel, the Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection) present Jesus with the case of the woman who marries in turn seven brothers. This custom of obliging a surviving brother to marry their widowed sister-in-law was a remnant of the rules of the clan. The intention was to provide for the woman’s welfare through the brothers of the dead husband. This example, for the Sadducees, proves that there can be no eternal life, for it raises the problem of who would be the woman’s husband in the next world. Jesus, in his reply, raises the subject to another level. He is not simply saying that eternal life is of the celibate sort. Life is a journey and the point of arrival is a different matter altogether. If I am going on a trip, I wear clothing appropriate to the climate I encounter during the trip, but it might not be suitable clothing for my destination. Living according to the life of heaven does not entail “taking”  a husband or a wife. The life of  the resurrection is to live according to that kind of existence which erupted in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the life of the One who is not God of the dead but of the living.

 

Can we live the faith without believing in the resurrection?

The question that this liturgy poses is, can we live the life of faith without believing in the resurrection? It is impossible, because every  single Christian act of love requires belief in a life that is beyond. Every time we expend ourselves in loving service of others, we, in a sense, lose our own lives. If we did not believe in an eternal significance to what we are doing, then we would be reduced to doing such good deeds out of forced acts of the will. No! We believe in eternal life, in life according to  God. We experience that life already now, but will only enjoy it in full at the  resurrection of the dead. This life is incapable of giving meaning or sense to itself in material terms. It is only the destination that explains the journey. Our actions are given meaning because we believe in eternal consolation, in divine destiny. This  Sunday is an important opportunity for living according to eternal life, an opportunity to trust what we say in the Our  Father, that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven”.

 

ALTERNATIVE HOMILY

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection and considered this hypothetical situation (of the woman with seven husbands) to be a serious challenge to anyone who believed in eternal life. Don Fabio tells us that, in fact, it was the Sadducees’ view of life in general (not just eternal life) that was absurd. The sort of life they believed in was horizontal, earthly, and deprived of all eternal significance. Unless we believe in the resurrection then we cannot grasp the enormous dignity of the human person. No-one would be capable of unconditional love, authentic mercy, or sacrifice for the sake of others, if he did not believe in the eternal dimension of human life and action. A true perspective on life is only possible through the lens of eternity. But why does Jesus tell the Sadducees that the people who are destined for heaven do not marry? In other places, Jesus unambiguously affirms the indissolubility of marriage and that the union of man and woman is part of God’s basic plan for humanity. He wants the Sadducees to know that marriage in an earthly sense has no place in the Kingdom of Heaven. If I get married just for my own earthly purposes, then the union will not last. I will tire of my spouse or run from her when she makes me suffer. But when I live my marriage as part of God’s design for the human race, as a sacrament of encounter with God, then I will continue to embrace her even when she makes me suffer. This is the distinction Jesus wishes to make: Marriage in the earthly sense of the Sadducees has no significance in heaven. But marriage that is focussed on eternity is a different story. In this case, I live my marriage as an angel sent on a mission from God and my marriage becomes something genuine, a place of encounter with God.