Word to the Wise
Saturday, November 25, 2017 - Saturday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[1 Macc 6:1-13 and Luke 20:27-40]"The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise." [Luke]
The Sadducees have a mixed agenda. They do not believe in a final resurrection of the dead because they could not find a reference to it in the Torah (the first five books of what we call the Old Testament). So their question is aimed not just at Jesus but at any Pharisees or others in the audience that did believe in a final resurrection or even in angels. The question is absurd but it does address something that many faithful people wonder about and thousands of jokes attempt to address. What's it like in heaven?
Jesus deals with the issue of final resurrection by noting that when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, God refers to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as if they are still alive. Thus they had to be with God. But then Jesus goes on to comment about the absurd marriage question by saying that human relationships on earth do not govern relationships with God after death. Our tendency to give geographic expression to eternal life is for our benefit and imagination. Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have pointed out that heaven is a relationship, not a geographic location. St. Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians 15 speak of a profound change but leave it at the level of mystery. "Death, where is your victory?"
Our faith is a response to a great love, as Pope Benedict taught in Lumen Fidei. The Gospel According to John assures us that eternal life begins when we have faith in Jesus, and continues when we die if we keep faith. How many times we marry or remarry or any other wonderful things we would like to take with us after death will not matter in the joy of seeing God face to face. AMEN