Word to the Wise
Saturday, November 19, 2022 - 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." [Luke]
There is an old expression in the legal profession, "Hard cases make bad law!" The question asked by the Sadducees comes from their belief that only the first five books of the Bible (the Torah or Pentateuch) were revelation, and they could not find any reference to resurrection in those books. But their motive in asking the question was to trap Jesus into taking a position that could justify their hostility. The fact situation is absurd and theoretical and based on the rule in Leviticus requiring the brother of a man who dies childless to marry the deceased brother's wife to raise up children in his name. The poor woman in this story endures marriage to seven brothers! Whose wife will she be at the resurrection (which the Sadducees denied anyhow)? Jesus not only disproves their argument scripturally, but dismisses their question as irrelevant. At least some of the scribes agreed: "Teacher, you have answered well!"
But the question remains in the minds of folks even today. What is heaven like? Will I be reunited with beloved spouses, friends, pets, enemies? Jesus' response seems, at least to me, to be mirrored in St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15: "What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be but a bare kernel of wheat, perhaps, or of some other kind; but God gives it a body as he chooses and to each of the seeds its own body." The resurrection body is not the one we have now and heaven is not a geographical "place" but a relationship with God. Jesus' statement in the Gospel According to John: "In my Father's house there are many mansions.." {14:1-3] should not be taken in a geographical or residential sense!! The "beatific vision" will be one of eternal love. Hell will be the exclusion from that love and an everlasting unsatisfied longing for it. AMEN