32nd
Ordinary Sunday (Year C)
First
Reading: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
Second Reading: 2
Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 Gospel
Reading: Luke 20:27-38
"HE
IS GOD NOT OF THE DEAD, BUT OF THE LIVING."
A
very zealous
soul-winning preacher recently came upon a farmer working in his
field. Being concerned about the farmer's soul the preacher asked the
man, “Are you laboring in the
vineyard of the Lord my good man?”
Not
even looking at the preacher and continuing his work the farmer
replied, “Naw, these are soybeans.”
“You
don't understand,” said the
preacher. “Are you a Christian?”
With
the same amount of interest as his previous answer the farmer said,
“Nope, my name is Jones. You must be looking for Jim
Christian. He lives a mile south of here.”
The
young determined preacher tried again asking the farmer, “Are
you lost?”
“Naw,
I've lived here all my life,”
answered the farmer.
“Are
you prepared for the resurrection?”
the frustrated preacher asked.
This
caught the farmer's attention and he asked, “When's it
gonna be?”
Thinking
he had accomplished something the young preacher replied, “It
could be today, tomorrow, or the next day.”
Taking
a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his brow the farmer
replied, “Well, don't mention it to my wife. She don't
get out very much and she will wanna go all three days.”
Today
is the 32nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time. For
the final few Sundays of each Liturgical Year, the Church turns her
reflective and prayerful attention to what we call 'eschatological'
concerns, i.e. to our own personal end of life and to the 'end
of the world.'
The Scripture Readings of today bring our attention to the fact of
resurrection
of the body
and the truth of life
eternal.
The First Reading from the 2nd
Book of Maccabees describes the torture and martyrdom of seven
brothers who urged by their heroic mother remained faithful to God
with the hope that they will enjoy the glory of the resurrection to
come. This passage also prepares us for the Gospel Reading from St.
Luke which deals with a question the Sadducees challenged Jesus with
about the resurrection, something they did not believe in. The Second
Reading from the Second Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians
exhorts the suffering to remain steadfast in their faith and tells
them not to be over anxious about the situation of after-life or the
end of the world, and to draw strength from their hope that when
Jesus appeared again in glory, their persecutors would be punished
and they, themselves, would be relieved of every affliction.
JEWISH
FAMILY'S FAITH IN RESURRECTION:
The
First Reading of today from the 2nd
Book of Maccabees is a macabre tale of the torture and execution of
seven brothers immediately followed by the killing of their mother.
The Lectionary shields us from the worst, excising six verses from
the middle of the tale, but a glimpse at the full text reveals how
the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus Epiphanes, a Syrian king who forces
the people of God to adopt pagan religious practices, and his
henchmen literally butcher their victims, as though preparing them
for the table, or for smoking altars, and then cook them in large
pans and cauldrons. One-by-one the brothers are fried alive.
The best part of the story for us is
the Jewish family's faith in their own resurrection. It
is significant to note that this is one of the few Old Testament
passages that expresses faith in a resurrection. Although
they lived two centuries before Christ, their faith helped to prepare
the way for his coming. They had great hope in
resurrection. Each one of them was willing to die for the Law of
Moses because they believed in after-life and that at the last
trumpet, the King of the universe would raise them up to an
everlasting life. They were ready to die rather than sin, trusting in
the Lord God to raise them up again with their bodies being fully
restored. Theirs was an incredible faith displayed in the face of
death and torture. Each son seems to proclaim more eloquently than
the one before him faith in God and conviction of life after death.
The reading
concludes with the testimony of the fourth son who warns his
persecutors that their crimes will gain them no joy in the world to
come. He tells them that one cannot but choose to die at the hands of
mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by
him. He tells his torturers that they will have no resurrection to
life awaiting them because of their wickedness. On the other hand
shame and everlasting contempt awaits the wicked. They were sustained
and strengthened in their sufferings by the pious exhortation of
their faith-inspired mother. More so they were firmly convinced that
God of the Universe, the God of Justice and love, had glorious
eternal life in store for them. Thus so a clear and lively hope for
the final resurrection became widespread among the Jews. The first
reading therefore underlines the foundations of belief and hope in
the life hereafter. It was born out of suffering that tested faith.
“HE
IS GOD IS NOT OF THE DEAD, BUT OF THE LIVING”:
In
today's Gospel Reading, we hear about an encounter between Jesus and
some Sadducees. Who
were the Sadducees? Basically they were a sect within the Jewish
community. They included many of the priestly class and upper echelon
families. Politically they were more ready to compromise with the
Romans in the interests of their own power and wealth. Another
distinguishing mark of the Sadducees was that they only accepted as
the word of God the part of the Old Testament known as the
Pentateuch. The Pentateuch consists of the first five books of the
Hebrew (Old) Testament, which are traditionally attributed to Moses
as their author. They were literal
interpreters of the written Law of Moses, which means that they were
in disagreement with the position of the Pharisees, who offered an
oral
interpretation of the Law of Moses. Because of this, the Sadducees
did not accept beliefs which were found in other parts of the Hebrew
Testament. So, for instance, they refused to believe in the existence
of angels, or spirits, or resurrection from the dead.
The Sadducees are described in this Gospel as opponents to the belief
in resurrection. They cringed at Jesus' preaching about the
resurrection and tried to belittle him.
In the
Gospel passage we see that the Sadducees are trying to trick Jesus by
getting him to respond to a hypothetical and an impossible question
about the resurrection. Their attack is prompted by an obscure law.
They use the example of Levirate marriage, found in the Law of Moses,
to disprove belief in the resurrection. According to Deuteronomy
25:5-10, if a man died without producing an heir, the man's brother
should marry his wife and the offspring of this union would inherit
the property and carry on the name of the man who had died. The
Sadducees use this as an example to challenge belief in the
resurrection. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a
woman and died childless. The second up to the seventh married her
one after the other and also died childless. Finally, the woman died.
At the resurrection, they asked, whose wife would she be, since the
seven brothers were married to her? In fact their question radiated
that sarcasm and ridicule and they never sincerely expected a
response from Jesus. Their aim was to corner Jesus into an improbable
religious belief and make him a laughing stock before the people.
Jesus
answers the question on various levels. First of all, he implies that
life after death is not exactly the same as physical existence. In
his proper reply Jesus tells the people that the children of this
world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a
place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead 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 children of
God. In other
words, in the resurrection, when we are transformed at the twinkle of
an eye, just like the angels of God, we will receive spiritual bodies
that are incorruptible. In this physical world, God has instituted
the Sacrament of marriage and procreation for mankind to multiply and
spread all over the earth. But once in Heaven, there will be no more
procreation. The man from Heaven does not live by the same rules as
the man of dust. Jesus' answer cuts the
ground from under the Sadducees by revealing that the risen life
beyond the grave, the identity of God's people, is a matter of being
God's children, not of being any one's husband or wife. It will
indeed be given by our being sisters and brothers in Christ, and thus
adopted sons and daughters of the Father.
Again, since
Sadducees held only the Law of Moses as their guide, Jesus concludes
his argument to that by citing the remarkable incident of Moses
encountering God in the burning bush. God calling out to Moses from
the burning bush identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. When Moses did encounter God, these Patriarchs were dead and
gone. But we have the God who is God of the living persons and cannot
be God of those dead. Yet God says to Moses that he is the God of
those persons. That meant for certain that those persons were not
dead in the divine sense but were still living. The creative power of
God brings life after death. This argument puts the Sadducees to
silence and indeed Jesus had met them on their own ground and won the
battle. They
dare not contradict the word of God coming through Moses.
It is
not in today’s Gospel passage but immediately after this Luke
comments: “And some of the
teachers of the Law (possibly Pharisees) answered, ‘Teacher,
you have spoken well’”.
In other words, they were delighted to see the Sadducees put down.
And Luke continues, “For
they (the teachers of the Law) no longer dared to ask Jesus any
question.”
Jesus had established his authority but he had also guaranteed his
final destiny.
BEING HOPEFUL IN
LIVING UP THE GOSPEL:
Today’s
Second Reading from the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
opens our eyes to the fact that the Lord strengthens our hearts in
every good work and word. He
tells the Thessalonians, "The
Lord is faithful,"
and it is the supreme justification for the hope of all Christians.
Paul
prays that Jesus and his loving Father will give the Thessalonians
the help they need to be courageous and hopeful in living up to the
Gospel and proclaiming it to others. We learn that through prayer,
the word and the work of the Lord that is manifested through us
rapidly spreads and in this way God is glorified everywhere. Through
our prayers for each other, we faithful children of God are rescued
from the wicked and evil people. To protect all, God placed His Holy
Spirit within each and every one of us so that those baptized may
follow His statutes and keep His ordinances and obey them. Here we
experience the humanness of Paul, who tells them that he is begging
Christ and God the Father to console and strengthen them so that they
may continue to live their faith. In return he asks them to pray that
he will be able to continue to spread the Christian faith to many
others. Prayer
prepares us and equips us to welcome even that most dreaded moment of
life and, in that moment, to embrace death
as a passage through which we will come face to face with the God who
calls us to life everlasting.
CONCLUSION:
The
Scripture Readings
today invite us to think of death. We face death all the time. Life’s
end may well come when one least expects it. All the more reason to
live our daily life with a healthy and balanced on-going awareness of
our own individual mortality. What we do in life and how we do it
ought to be approached with that joyful expectancy and awareness.
Christian belief in immortality is
unique and special. The Gospel tells us of the Good News of the
fullness of life in this age and of the resurrection in the age to
come. For us death is a door that opens us to full of surprises and
not a wall which blinds us from every possible vision. Our
resurrection gives us the hope that we will be with God fully alive
and active fulfilling the call that God has given us. The
great way Jesus affirmed the hope for resurrection was by his own
rising from the dead. Jesus' resurrection does not only tell us that
the dead will rise, it causes
the dead to rise. Jesus the 'First-Fruit'
enables the harvest to take place; his resurrection is the 'channel'
through which God's Spirit will flow to all the dead to restore them
to life, and his risen glory is the 'prototype'
on which the Spirit will pattern God's friends when they rise.
So
what message do we take home this Sunday? Today's readings challenge
us to live in the light of the resurrection, full of hope that indeed
there is life after this present earthly life. That is why we confess
in the Creed that 'I believe in the
resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.'
The resurrection is the centerpiece of our faith and Christians have
shed their blood because of that faith. Again, just as in the First
Reading, the Jewish family endured suffering because of their faith
in the resurrection, we too must be prepared to defend and to live
our faith in the resurrection. Moreover, St. Paul was aware of this
kind of opposition and persecution. It is as though he speaks
directly to us in today’s Second Reading. “Pray
that you might be delivered from perverse and wicked people. For not
all have faith. Be faithful to the Lord and the Lord will be faithful
to you.” That is why the Gospel
Reading today invites us not only to celebrate our faith in the
living God, but also to be quite clear on what our faith in the
resurrection means. "He is God of the living, not of the dead." And this is the Good News of today.
**************************
No comments:
Post a Comment