Word to the Wise
Saturday, November 21, 2020 - Saturday in the 33th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rev 11:4-12 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. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called 'Lord' the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." [Luke]
NOVEMBER 21 THE PRESENTATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
The Sadducees were a group of Jews who denied any resurrection from the dead or the existence of angels or anything that could not be shown from the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. There was no love lost between the Sadducees and Pharisees because the latter believed in resurrection and angels among other things that could be found in other books of the Old Testament. St. Paul exploited this difference during one of his many arrests. (cf. Acts 23:6-9). In today's gospel passage, the Sadducees try to test Jesus by proposing an absurd theoretical question about a woman who marries each of seven brothers. At the final resurrection, whose wife would she be? No doubt, such questions were used during arguments between Sadducees and Pharisees. In this case, Jesus shows that the Sadducees have failed to understand their own position since the Book of Exodus refers to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as if those patriarchs were still alive!!
For us Christians, the question may seem to be a silly dispute, but Jesus' statement is a direct affirmation of life after death and, indeed, of the existence of angels!!! Once we are conceived, we are "alive" to God and remain so for eternity! On earth, we live but a miniscule part of our life, but this miniscule part determines all the rest. "Tomorrow" makes sense only on earth, but it is never guaranteed. After death it makes no sense at all. As a matter of faith, the one "tomorrow" we should aim for is the one when we join God and leave "tomorrow" behind. That is Jesus' guarantee! AMEN