Today's Message: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time C

2 Maccabees 7: 1-2, 9-14;  2 Thessalonians 2: 16 - 3:5;  Luke 20: 27-38 

Do I understand what faces me after death?  Do I believe that God has described the place as being heaven and that God intends that every person has a place in heaven?  Do I accept this?  Do I believe that heaven is for the nice people that I believe are there and hell for the rotten people?  Am I too simplistic with these thoughts?  Do I want heaven to be an end of all my pain and sufferings or do I want it to be filled with the source of life and love?  Am I afraid of what lies after life ends because I don’t know what awaits me? 

Paul’s letter to the Romans chapter 8: 38-39 tells us: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Msgr. Chet Michael felt that J.B. Phillips The New Testament in Modern English translated Paul’s letters most accurately.  His translation of the above passage states: “I have become absolutely convinced that neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!” 

Do I realize that this is God’s promise to each person?  Do I realize that Jesus’ entire life tells us that God’s love is forever, specific and individualized  for each person because everyone is special to God?  The readings today zero in on these subjects telling us that the teachings of Jesus about the reign of God can be distorted even by well-intentioned Christian believers.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the ‘coming Reign of God will be a kingdom of love, peace, and justice.  Justice is defined as a virtue whereby one respects the rights of all persons living in harmony and equity with all.’  Jesus lived this reign and showed us how to do this.  Heaven is its total forever fulfillment.

We look at the readings today starting with Maccabees.  Today’s remarkable astounding passage shows a God-less ruler is bent on breaking the faith of true believers in God.  A mother and her seven sons are given a terrible ultimatum to either choose to violate the dietary laws of their Jewish faith or choose to die.  First they were tortured unmercifully (read the full passage in Chapter 7).  Not only were they unwavering in their faith but they gave testimony to their total belief and love of God.  All were horribly put to death and the last one proclaiming her love by dying was the mother.  Their testimony challenged the earthly king because of his thirst for power.  All power comes from God, the King of the Universe who has the power to raise all life to eternal life.  The fourth son adds a warning that the wicked persecutors will not enjoy the resurrection to new life.  I’m reminded of ISIS and its atrocities in one incident when three boys maybe ten or eleven where beheaded.  As they died they said that they would not deny their faith in Jesus.  Is my faith that precious and important to me? 

Paul tells the Thessalonians that “…our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through His grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.”   In this way people will see God’s glory.  Paul Claudel, a spiritual writer, has a wonderful passage says that ‘Jesus did not come to take away our suffering but to fill it with His presence.  Paul also assures the people that the Lord’s second coming will happen. No one knows the time it will happen.  But everyone must be ready for it by living the life of faith, hope and constant love.  God will give everyone the strength needed to remain faithful .  How am I doing in this?  The scriptures remind us constantly and Jesus in His parables remind us not to slacken in our daily living of love.  Am I taking the easy way encouraged always by the devil?

Today’s Gospel Jesus is addressing a different group, the Sadducees.  They are mentioned so infrequently that we are not exactly clear who they are.  They seem to be a very conservative aristocratic group closely associated with the Temple.  They totally disagree with the Pharisees who believed in the resurrection of the dead; death is not the end.  The Sadducees maintained very strict adherence to the Law which assured their purity.  Today they attempted to embarrass Jesus by posting an impossible situation based on their own ignorance of bible teachings.  Deuteronomy 25:5-10 states how a childless widow is to be protected by her husband’s oldest brother so that a male heir might be produced.  So at the Resurrection of the dead they didn’t believe in whose wife the woman would be if seven brothers married her and there were no children?  Resurrection is not where a person receives his or her life back.  Jesus points out that the great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all referred to as belonging to the God of the living.  Jesus’ example says that the rules governing our earthly behavior will become irrelevant when we experience resurrected life.  Again, we see this in Paul’s letter to the Romans:  “…eye has not seen nor ear heard…”  Death is about life with God when God will be everything to us. 

Sunday Homily Helps offers three reflections:

•     “Our faith says that death brings an engagement with God whose face-to-face presence will be so to speak, ‘heaven’ — when God will be everything to us.

•     If God becomes, at death, our all in all,’ it would seem odd for someone who is experiencing God directly to say, ‘this is pretty good, but I can’t wait to get my husband/wife back.’

•     The Paradox that Christian faith presents is that only through death can we experience the ultimate encounter with the living God, whose presence is eternal life.”

•     What would it take for me to have the courage of the three young boys? Of the seven brothers? Of the mother?

•     How do I stay focused on Christ each day to find strength and hope? 

•     When it comes to heaven, we cannot understand we can only imagine. 

•     When life is good, it is easy and my faith seems very strong.  When life is filled with pain, suffering, even persecution and death I waver and am afraid.  Lord it is only You who can fill me with Your grace.

Sacred Space 2019 states:

   “By answering the exaggerated story of the Sadducees, who did not believe the resurrection, Jesus points out that the resurrected state is a new creation by which we are sharing in the divine life of God.  It is different from our present life but a continuation nonetheless of our personalities, as molded by our present life.

   To believe in your own personal resurrection is a wonderful gift in this life.  It gives meaning to all that makes up your life.  It is expressed  also in our prayers that we offer for the repose of the souls of all those who have gone before us, which we emphasize during this month of November.”