Word to the Wise
Saturday, November 20, 2021 - 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. 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]
The incident of the absurd question from the Sadducees about the woman who married each of seven brothers and her relationship to them after the resurrection occurs in the Gospel According to Luke in Jesus' last days in Jerusalem. His resurrection will come soon. The Sadducees denied the existence of angels and the resurrection of the dead because they claimed they could not find any evidence of this in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, which were the only ones they accepted. Jesus refutes them on both counts. At the same time, he also responds to a continuing concern that I still hear from devout Christians, concerned with valued relationships here on earth which they want to continue after death.
Both Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have reminded us that heaven is not a place but a relationship. This relationship will shape all others after death. What it will be like is a mystery to which our imagination often responds in earthly categories, like the Sadducees did. Earthly analogies are the best we humans can do. St. Dominic, on his deathbed, told his followers not to mourn his departure because he would be of greater use to them where he was going! I have found that a very comforting thought. The Book of Wisdom says it wonderfully, "The souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment shall touch them. They seemed in the view of the foolish to be dead, but they are in peace." [Wisdom 3:1] The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is our God, too. AMEN