06 November. 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Theme: In this month of the dead, we celebrate the God of the living, in whom all are alive. We are members of the Communion of Saints, linked with those who have gone before us.

1st Reading: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14

Martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons; faith in the resurrection

At that time, seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, “What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.” And when he was at his last breath, he said, “You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.”

After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands and said nobly, “I got these from Heaven and because of his laws I disdain them and from him I hope to get them back again.”

As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing. After he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way. When he was near death, he said, “One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!”

2nd Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5

“May the Lord strengthen your hearts!” Paul prays for their fidelity in the faith

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.

Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you and that we may be rescued from wicked and evil people; for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.

And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will go on doing the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

Gospel: Luke 20:27-38

Belief in the resurrection, since God is a God of the living

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 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.”

Bible

For Kieran O’Mahony’s exegesis of today’s texts, click here


Memento

What of the afterlife?

Much of our traditional images of heaven and hell stems from a section of Jewish writings, the Apocalyptic literature (which is not in the Hebrew canon of scripture) and also from writings and paintings of the Middle Ages, for example Dante’s Inferno and Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. During this month of the Holy Souls, it is good to recall the sober teaching of the Church about the condition of those who have gone before us and what kind of assistance we can hope to give them. The teaching of the Church says that for all those who die without having properly repented their sins, there is a purification in the next life; also, that these departed souls can be helped by the prayers of the faithful still in this life, and especially through offering the Mass on their behalf. The Church teaches nothing about the nature of this purification, or its duration. It is purely popular imagination which imagines Purgatory as a kind of hell with a lower temperature. Most of our thinking about future existence is pure guesswork. The Cure of Ars, the mystic St John Vianney, when once asked about the life hereafter simply said, “I know nothing of to-morrow, except that the love of God will rise before the sun.”

The important thing is that we have Christ’s word of promise that he made at the Last Supper. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still and trust in me. In my Father’s house there are many rooms and I am going to prepare a place for you”. But these words, however consoling, should not make us complacent, for we are continually being challenged to choose between the grace of God and our own selfish cravings. If we do not respond to the love of God we experience a sense of profound unrest and loneliness.

The great Cardinal Newman in his long poem “The Dream of Gerontius” wrote of the healing process of Purgatory ridding of the last traces of selfishness and so preparing us to live for ever in God’s presence, face to face. To be confronted with the perfection of the glorified person of Christ can at first cause anguish to the souls of the departed. But the Lord is there to heal that soul and draw it to heaven. And this is what we pray for the Holy Souls in this month of November.


The faithful are never dead for God

Jesus has always been very serious in talking about the new life that comes after the resurrection. However, when a group of aristocratic Sadducees try to make light of belief in the resurrection of the dead, his response is to raise the question to its true level and make two basic affirmations. First of all, he rejects the Sadducees’ childish notion that the life of the raised is a prolongation of this life as we know it now. It’s wrong to represent the life of those risen by God by basing it on our present experiences. There’s a radical difference between our earthly life and the full life given directly by God’s love after death. That Life is absolutely “new”. That’s why we can await it but never describe it or explain it.

The first generations of Christians maintained this humble and honest attitude in the face of the mystery of eternal life. Paul tells his Corinthian converts that we’re dealing with something that ” eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has anyone ever imagined, what God has prepared for those God loves”. These words help us as a healthy warning and a joyful orientation. On the one hand, heaven is completely “new”, something that is beyond any terrestrial experience; but on the other hand, it’s a life “prepared” by God for the complete fulfillment of our deepest aspirations. What’s proper to faith is to not let our curiosity be naively satisfied, but to feed the desire, the expectation, the hope that trusts in God.

That’s precisely what Jesus seeks to do by appealing to a fact clearly accepted by the Sadducees: in the biblical tradition God is called “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. In spite of the fact that these patriarchs have died, God continues being their God, their protector, their friend. Death hasn’t been able to destroy God’s love and fidelity toward them.

Jesus draws his own conclusion, making an affirmation that is decisive for our faith: “God isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living; because for God all are alive”. God is a perpetual spring of life. Death doesn’t leave God without beloved sons and daughters. When we mourn those whom we’ve lost in this world, God looks on them full of life because God has welcomed them in divine, paternal love. According to Jesus, God’s union with us can’t be destroyed by death. God’s love is stronger that our biological extinction. That’s why, with humble faith, we dare to cry out: “My God, in You I trust. Do not let me be defrauded” (Psalm 25,1-2).

[Paraphrased from José Antonio Pagola]


The Riddle of the Seven Husbands

The riddle the Sadducees use in today’s gospel is exaggerated and humorous; but it was their way of setting the question about whether there is an afterlife, and see how Jesus would respond. In the afterlife, we will presumably be free of the bodily constraints and appetites that are part of our present experience. We will all be like children in God’s presence, fully complete in love, no longer needing what we need in this world.

There is an inherent hope in the human heart for a life beyond this present “mortal coil”. But nobody can tell us reliable details about the afterlife. It is what Shakespeare called “The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” And yet we can look at it more hopefully through the eyes of the great apostle Paul who said: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of any person to imagine what God has in store for those who love him.”


Island of Saints and Scholars

The Feast of All the Saints of Ireland must yield priority to the Sunday liturgy. This feast was instituted in 1921, by Pope Benedict XV, after he beatified Oliver Plunkett in 1920. Here are three points related to today’s feast:

1) Only four canonised saints: Only four saints, St Malachy (1094-1148), St Lawrence O’Toole (1128-80) and St Oliver Plunkett (1625-81) and St Charles of Mount Argus (1821-93), have been officially canonised. All the other Irish saints, such as Saints Patrick, Brigid, and Colmcille, are saints, as it were, by acclamation of the local Church.

This feast also includes those who had a reputation for holiness and whose causes for canonisation have not yet been completed, such as Blessed Thaddeus MacCarthy (1455-92), the seventeen Irish martyrs of the 16th and 17th centuries, Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice (1762-1844), Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923) and the Servant of God Matt Talbot (1856-1925) and people like Legion of Mary envoys Edel Quinn and Alfie Lamb, whose causes have already been introduced. But it also includes those whose lives of sanctity were known only to their families, friends or members of their parish diocese or religious community.

 

One Comment

  1. Fr. Fernando Meza says:

    Thank You very much for its reflections of the Gospel, are very inspiring for priest, clear doctrinal and pastoral content. God Bless You.

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