He Is The Living God!

 

(Homily 32^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr. C)

     The Church directly or indirectly invites us often to meditate on the reality of the “last things” and the Church does it practically in the course of the liturgical year, but particularly towards the end of the liturgical year. It is important to meditate on the realty of the last things because our belief and hope in the hereafter ought to condition the meaning of our present life, the orientation we have to give to our life and the comportment we have to assume. It is against the above backdrop, that the Word of God in this 32^nd Sunday of ordinary time invites us to reflect on a truth of faith, about the future life, which we tend to wave aside many a times (because the thought of it discomforts us), that is the final resurrection of our body. The Liturgy of the Word today affirms not only the reality of life after death (the hereafter) but also the resurrection of the body to new life.

     We are therefore caught up with a pertinent and an existential question that touches the very essence of man: What is the final destiny of man? Therein, we have to grapple with the paradox of life and death, and of time and eternity. In the first reading, the martyrdom of the mother and her seven children in the time of the Maccabean war offers us the occasion to proclaim vigorously the faith in the resurrection for life. Again, in the Gospel Jesus teaches us that man’s destiny is life, but this life in the hereafter is not equal and cannot be compared with the earthly life. St. Paul on his part, asked the Thessalonians to pray, so that the word of the Lord may speed on and triumph, indeed at the heart of this invitation of St. Paul is the consciousness for the final destiny of man. Above all, the Christian message is a message of hope, for it announces triumph over evil, the triumph of God over all his enemies, and the last of the enemies is death. This message is not the Church’s invention, rather it comes from God “who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace” (2Th.2:16). Against this backdrop lies hidden the message of hope, hope for eternity. God is indeed a living God, and because He lives we shall also live!

          The first reading (2Mac. 7:1-2.9-14) presents a dramatic episode: the martyrdom of seven Jewish brothers with their mother (though our passage today only talked about the martyrdom of the first four). They suffered martyrdom under the pagan King of Syria, Antiochus IV (175-163) for not transgressing the laws of God and the religious traditions of their fathers. The courage of these young men in bearing torture and death is really overwhelming. It is a courage that can only spring up from their unwavering faith in God, who gives justice to those who obey his laws and decrees. And He rewards those who obey His laws not only with life in the hereafter, but also with the resurrection of their body. The second brother before his death exclaimed with his last breath thus: “Cruel brute, you may discharge us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since we die for his law, to live again forever” (v.9), later the fourth brother added: “Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas for you there can be no resurrection to new life” (v.14). In the words of Daniel: “Of those who are sleeping in the Land of Dust, many will awaken, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting disgrace” (Dan. 12:2).

     In this passage, we see for the first time in the Old Testament an explicit affirmation of the faith in the resurrection of the body. This theme of the hope of resurrection, for the Christian has been made a sure hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and it is made possible for us by our union with him in baptism and in the Eucharist. The hope in question is not merely for the resuscitation of the earthly body and a prolongation of the earthly existence, but it is an entirely new mode of existence, in St. Paul’s parlance, he talks about the “spiritual body”. However, the courage and audacity of faith of these brothers have to spur us on in our own journey of faith, especially in the face of suffering, disappointments, injustice, sickness and persecution. Let us continually ask the Lord to give us the grace of a faith that is more and more robust, matured and courageous. The episode of this passage serves well as a bridge to link us to the Gospel passage. The Psalm is an individual lamentation for vindication; however, it ends with the expression of confidence in God. The first part serves as the martyrs’ prayer of vindication and the ending of the psalm expresses their confidence in the resurrection hope.

     In the passage of the Gospel (Lk. 20:27-38) we see some Sadducees in the scene, they belong to the sect of the aristocrats, of which many belong to the priestly sect, “those who argue that there is no resurrection” (v.27), while the Pharisees, another sect, believed in the resurrection, and they were followed by the majority of the people. In order to back up their belief, the Sadducees founded their doctrine on a certain law, the levirite. The levirate law stipulates that if a married man dies without having children, the brother (i.e the in-law of the widow, in Latin “levir”, this is where the name of the law is derived) will marry the widow with the aim of raising children, bringing forth descendants for his late brother, and as such to ascertain his survival through the children (cf. Dt. 25:5-10 and Gen. 38:8). Therefore, in order to demonstrate that the resurrection of the dead was incompatible with the Mosaic Law, they posed the question to Jesus, a purely hypothetical case, with the intent of ridiculing the proponents of the belief in the resurrection. They posed Jesus the question of a woman who married seven brothers without having any issue with or for any of them, “at resurrection, whose wife will she be, since she has been married to all seven?” (v.33). But this law is no longer relevant in the Christian community. Jesus did not allow himself to be thrown off balance with such a question; rather he offered his response in two moments:

●First of all, the Sadducees “are completely wrong” (cf. Mk. 12:27), because they think that life after death is equal to the present life, a continuation of the earthly existence, but it cannot be imagined or intuited with the human mind. Jesus affirmed that unlike it happens in this world where you take husband or wife, “those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry” (v.35), he continued “because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels” (v.36), they are immortal and as such, they do not need to procreate to secure their descendants, like the angels, they will live in the presence of God, praising God. Again, Jesus pointed out that “they are children of God” (v.36), they see God face to face, they participate in the divine life in such fullness that they do not need any other complement for their happiness. We can have an idea of what will be the condition of the resurrected body by making reference to the body of the risen Christ (it is no longer subject to suffering, to the conditions of space and time, and it is free from the law of matter). St. Paul will attempt to explain this concept thus: “this perishable nature of ours must put on imperishability, this mortal nature must put on immortality” (1Cor. 15:53). Yet in a clearer manner St. Paul explained: “we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transfigure the wretched body of ours into the mould of his glorious body, through the working of the power which he has, even to bring all things under his mastery” (Phil. 3:20b-21). As a matter of fact, such condition is not conceivable by human mind, therefore, the important thing is not to understand “how” it will be, but to be “judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead” (v.35), and in order to be judged worthy one needs to live already in the here and now “the already”, in the present time as a “child of God”, that is to be dead and risen in Christ through baptism, to die continually to sin in order to walk in the newness of life which Christ has gained for us. We need to carry the cross of our own suffering in union with Christ, in that way, we participate also in his resurrection: “If we have been joined to him by dying a death like his, so we shall be by a resurrection like his” (Rm.6:5).

●Secondly, Jesus' teaching is firm; neither berating nor condemning. Jesus was not satisfied with telling the Sadducees that their way of understanding is ridiculous, because they have an erroneous conception of the hereafter, rather he employed another evidence in favor of the resurrection of the dead, by making reference to the authority of Moses, which the Sadducees acknowledged. In the episode of the burning bush (Ex. 3:6) God revealed himself to Moses with the following words: “I am the God of your ancestors, he said, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”; and Jesus concluded thus: “Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him everyone is alive” (Lk. 20:38), therefore, they must be still alive. In other words he tends to say that the God who protected and saved the patriarchs, who established a covenant with them, the God who is faithful to his promises, the lover of life, whom they have adored, served and for whom they lived, cannot fall short in his commitment, and fail to save them from the greatest evil, that is death. He cannot be powerless before it like mortals, if not he is no longer God. He is stronger than death, thus death cannot destroy that bond and communion that God has established with his people. Thus, Jesus demonstrated that denying the resurrection of the dead entails denying God himself. To say it with E. Charpentier: “We do not believe in a life after death because the invention of a reassuring hereafter gives us the courage to bear an existence that ends with death. We believe in the resurrection because we are certain of being loved by a living God and we have seen his life force, his Spirit, actively present in his Son Jesus Christ, firstborn from the dead. And the evidence to give to men is to live daily for God”.

     The mistake of the Sadducees lies in the fact of imagining that life after death is a continuation of the earthly life, with the same conditionings and exigencies, they jettisoned the belief in the resurrection. Elsewhere the biblical revelation on the resurrection of the dead faced hostility as illustrated in the discourse of Paul at Areopagus: “We would like to hear you talk about this another time” (Acts 17:32). Instead resurrection signifies entrance into a new condition of life, the risen will be “the same as angels” and “children of God” (v.36), or better in perfect communion with God. On this, Jesus affirmed: “Do not be surprised at this, for the hour is coming when the dead will leave their graves at the sound of his voice: those who did good will come forth to life; and those who did evil will come forth to judgment” (Jn.5:28-29). Jesus declared: “I am the resurrection. Anyone who believes in me, even though that person dies, will live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (Jn.11:25-26) and again: “It is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and that I should raise that person up on the last day” (Jn. 6:40). The condition that Jesus gives for resurrection of life is to believe in Him, to live in Him and to be rooted in Him like the branches to the Vine. Elsewhere Jesus gives another condition, unless one is nourished by Him, present in the Eucharist: “Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on the last day” (Jn. 6:54).

     The second reading (2Th. 2:16-3:5) reaffirms this hope thus: “Our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father who has given us his love and, through his grace, such ceaseless encouragement and such sure hope, encourage you and strengthen you in every good word and deed” (vv.16-17). Indeed the sure hope St. Paul is talking about here is not just the hope of things to come but the hope in an eternal existence and inheritance. God is indeed, the giver of eternal comfort and good hope. A Christian lives in the dynamics of hope, sequel to this, G. Marcel made a distinction of two types of hope (Espérance and Espoir), in his parlance: “The only authentic hope is that directed at what does not depend on us”, that is, Espérance, a waiting for the fullness of being while Espoir is a waiting for the future means of life. The hope we are talking about here is Espérance, the Christian hope.

     Truly, the reality of our death marks the limit of man and not the limit of God’s power, “Yahweh gives death and life, and brings down to Sheol and draws up” (1Sam. 2:6). Jesus is the Guarantor and his resurrection the guarantee of the realization of our resurrection hope. It is a hope indeed that does not disappoint. Jesus himself gives us the most sublime and decisive evidence of a life after death and of the resurrection of the body, through his own resurrection from the dead. Jesus is “the First-born from the dead” (Rev. 1:5; Col.1:18). And St. Paul captured vividly well the primacy of Christ on the credibility of the resurrection thus: “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without substance, and so is your faith… In fact, however, Christ has been raised from the dead, as the first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep” (1Cor. 15:14.20) and because He lives, we shall also live. “Do not be afraid; it is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One, I was dead and look – I am alive for ever and ever” (Rev. 1:17b-18a). Jesus is our Hope of eternal Glory! God is a living God, a lover of life, May He give us the fullness of life in Him, Amen!

(Fr. Vitus M.C. Unegbu, SC)