(Homily
32nd 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 32nd
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)
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