23 November, 2019. Saturday of Week 33
1st Reading: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
King Antiochus of Syria falls gravely ill for having persecuted the Jews
King Antiochus was going through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais in Persia was a city famed for its wealth in silver and gold. Its temple was very rich, containing golden shields, breastplates, and weapons left there by Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned over the Greeks. So he came and tried to take the city and plunder it, but he could not because his plan had become known to the citizens and they withstood him in battle. So he fled and in great disappointment left there to return to Babylon.
Then someone came to him in Persia and reported that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been routed; that Lysias had gone first with a strong force, but had turned and fled before the Jews; that the Jews had grown strong from the arms, supplies, and abundant spoils that they had taken from the armies they had cut down; that they had torn down the abomination that he had erected on the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded the sanctuary with high walls as before, and also Beth-zur, his town.
When the king heard this news, he was astounded and badly shaken. He took to his bed and became sick from disappointment, because things had not turned out for him as he had planned. He lay there for many days, because deep disappointment continually gripped him, and he realized that he was dying. So he called all his Friends and said to them, “Sleep has departed from my eyes and I am downhearted with worry. I said to myself, “To what distress I have come! And into what a great flood I now am plunged! For I was kind and beloved in my power.’ But now I remember the wrong I did in Jerusalem. I seized all its vessels of silver and gold, and I sent to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good reason. I know that it is because of this that these misfortunes have come upon me; here I am, perishing of bitter disappointment in a strange land.”
Responsorial: Psalm 9:2-4, 6, 16, 19
R./: I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord
I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;
I will recount all your wonders.
I will rejoice in you and be glad,
and sing psalms to your name, O Most High. (R./)
See how my enemies turn back,
how they stumble and perish before you.
You have checked the nations, destroyed the wicked;
you have wiped out their name for ever and ever. (R./)
The nations’ feet have been caught in the snare they laid;
for the needy shall not always be forgotten
nor the hopes of the poor be in vain. (R./)
Gospel: Luke 20:27-40
Jesus affirms the resurrection, because God is the God of the living
Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him another question.
Is there a hereafter?
The Sadducees, who did not hope for any life beyond our present existence, confront Jesus with a scenario seeking to mock his belief in life after death. They knew that he believed in a future life, and their scornful question assumes that any after-life would be simply an extension of our present physical life, with all its rules and relationships. Jesus challenges this notion and says that those who belong to the world of resurrection will live a different kind of life. In eternity there is no procreation or marriage in our present sense.
How people will relate to each other in the hereafter will not be as we relate to each other now. He does not explain how this will be, but just that it will be of different quality to our conventions of here and now. Speaking of what lies beyond, he uses standard Jewish imagery about communal living, picturing it as a great banquet of joy and sharing. His main focus was to gather people into a sharing community. This community, later to be called the church (ekklesia, “the ones who are called”), was to be a visible sign of the life to come. It points the way to God’s kingdom, even if heaven is beyond the range of our understanding.
