6 Nov 2022 – 32nd Sunday (C)
6 Nov 2022 – 32nd Sunday (C)
All the Saints of Ireland is not celebrated this year.
(1) 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
Martyrdom of the brothers and their mother: faith in the resurrection
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!”
Responsorial: Psalm 16:1, 5-6, 8, 15
R./: Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Lord, hear a cause that is just,
pay heed to my cry.
Turn your ear to my prayer:
no deceit is on my lips. (R./)
I kept my feet firmly in your paths;
there was no faltering in my steps.
I am here and I call, you will hear me, O God.
Turn your ear to me; hear my words. (R./)
Guard me as the apple of your eye.
Hide me in the shadow of your wings.
As for me, in my justice I shall see your face
and be filled, when I awake, with the sight of your glory. (R./)
(2) 2 Thessalonians 2:16–3:5
May the Lord direct your hearts!” Paul prays for their fidelity in the faith
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
Jesus teaches resurrection, because God is truly a 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.”
Knowing our direction
We would think it foolish to set out on a journey without knowing where we were going. In a broad sense, of course, our pilgrimage through life is largely a path into the unknown, a journey towards the destiny God sets for us. The Maccabee family whose martyrdom is reported in the first reading, believed very firmly that God had a place for them beyond death. The faith in the after-life expressed by each of them at the point of death is the most explicit in non-Christian Jewish literature. During this month of the Holy Souls, it is good to recall our faith in the resurrection of the body, and the our Church’s teaching about those who have gone before us and what kind of help we can hope to give them.
It is the Catholic tradition that for all those who die without fully repenting their sins, there is a purification in the next life. We also believe that the departed on Purgatory should be prayed for by those living, and especially through offering Mass on their behalf. While popular folklore may imagine it like hell with a lower temperature, the Church teaches nothing specific on the nature of Purgatory. Any ideas people may have about it are pure guesswork. The Curé of Ars, Saint John Vianney, when asked about the life hereafter said very simply, “I know nothing of to-morrow, except that the love of God will rise before the sun.”
Jesus promises at the Last Supper. “In my Father’s house there are many rooms and I am going to prepare a place for you.” While this offers us great hope it should not make us complacent, for we are daily challenged to choose between right and wrong, in order to follow the Lord of Life. If we do not live as God wants we feel an inner sense of unease. In his epic poem “The Dream of Gerontius” John Henry Newman described Purgatory as a healing process, preparing us for God’s presence. Awareness of sin causes anguish to the souls of the departed. But the Lord is there to heal that soul and draw us into heaven. This is what we pray for the Holy Souls in this month of November.
What lies in store
The tricky riddle set by the Sadducees in today’s gospel is exaggerated and humorous. They raise the question of the existence of an after-life by an implausible story, to see how Jesus would respond. In the afterlife, presumably we will be free of the bodily constraints and appetites that shape our present experience. We will all be like children in God’s presence, fully complete in love, no longer requiring what we need in this world.
The human heart feels an an inherent hope for the after-life. But It is what Shakespeare memorably called “The undiscovered country from which no traveller returns.” Though nobody comes back to confirm it for us, through Jesus we believe it is there, just the same. As Paul the apostle 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.”
Key Message:
Be close with God!!
Homily:
In the eyes of God our Father, all of us are always alive. Our loving Lord Jesus explains this truth very beautifully in today’s Gospel. God our Father introduces Himself to Moses as “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”. At that point of time, when God said this Abraham, Isaac, Jacob were all dead as far as earth was concerned. But to God our Father, they were all alive as He still sees them living in Heaven with Him.
So at the end of our earthly journey, only our body reaches an end, our soul goes on forever. Can we work in our earthly life so that we will be happy and joyful in life thereafter? The forgiveness of our Lord Jesus Christ will get us a ticket to Heaven, but how will we ensure that we spend our eternity in Heaven without any regrets of our life on earth?
Can we say like St. Paul, “I have run my race well on this earth”?
St. Paul supported those who murdered St. Stephen. But once he became aware of the truth, he committed himself to the plan that God had for him. When his life was ending, he was only expecting the victory cup which his Lord would give him. He was not worried about his life thereafter.
How can we expect the victory cup in store for us?
1. Be close with God
2. Do whatever He tells you to do
Be close with God:
There is a general idea that having a close relationship with God is boring or it is too far away from our reach. But He is not boring, He is very exciting!! When we lead our life with Him we will never feel bored. Our life will be on a roller coaster ride, but we will not be afraid, because we will be aware that we are sitting on His lap. When the big snake curled on St.Paul’s hands on the island, was he afraid? He just shook it off. We will also shake off any big challenge that curls us, since we are aware that God belongs to us.
Our Lord Jesus introduced God to us as the closest relation – Father. He did not introduce God as ‘Jehovah Jireh’. In the scriptures Jesus always addressed God lovingly as “Father” only. Apart from the time ,”My God, My God, why did you forsake me?”, when He had to represent the suffering servant. He breathed his last calling to God as Father, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
We should also be able to do the same. From now on we should enjoy the relationship with God. See Him as a person near you always focusing on you or inside you. If we think of Him as someone sitting on the throne in Heaven, we feel that He is a righteous judge. All that is later. Now He wants to be our close Father, always taking care of us. I know of some people who say God is their television set. It is because they enjoy speaking with God rather than seeing some entertainment on TV. The Bible says that in His right hand are pleasures forever more. Let us enjoy the pleasures available at His right hand. Let us make our prayer life an enjoyable one!! Only if we are able to enjoy it, we will be able to continue it till our last. Few tips…
1. Spend an hour with God daily in the morning. Begin the prayer saying, “How great is this place O Lord. For thou art here”, like Jacob.
2. When a person speaks from afar, we cannot feel his breath. But when he is very close to us, we can feel his breath. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is God breathed”, so when we read the scriptures, we can feel the closeness with God. To prepare our mind before studying scriptures, listen to the beautiful songs of worship.
3. Develop a habit of continuous conversations with our God. He is just a thought away. Write letters to our dear Jesus putting forth all that we feel and we want. We will see Jesus reading and answering it so well!! If we fear that we cannot write them in a note so that other people may have access to it, we can write it in our phone or laptop which we can lock and keep for ourselves.
If we are like a magnet attracting everyone to ourselves and creating a big network of friends, we will not be able to spend time with God. Then God cannot become our priority. When we give the first place to God in our lives, He will place the required friends for us.
“Faith in God” is a basic requirement for us to run our lives.
Do whatever He tells you to do:
God says, “I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” We are all always in God our Father’s hands. Even if we fall, where are we going to fall? We are only going to fall into God’s hands, aren’t we? Apart from God’s hands we can’t fall anywhere else.
So why should we let ourselves worry and hesitate from accomplishing whatever our God has asked us to accomplish in our life?
When we are God’s children, we are God’s responsibility. So let us not worry about ourselves but keep doing what God encourages us to do. In the second reading, St. Paul prays for God to encourage us – “encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word”. God encourages us. We have to do what He shows us to do, not get frightened by the size of the challenge that envelopes us when we try to do His will.
Let us consider this in the life of Israelites. Moses sent twelve spies to spy the land of Canaan. In God’s calendar, it was the time for the Israelites to possess the promised land. The land was near them. After six weeks, only two spies, Joshua and Caleb, gave the report according to God’s plan. They said, “The land is flowing with milk and honey, the people are also big, but with God we can win and possess the land”. The other ten spies gave a frightening report – “The land is flowing with milk and honey, but the people are too big for us to conquer. We cannot win over them and possess the land”. The whole of the Israel congregation went with the faithless report of the ten spies. They wailed and cried instead of going ahead and fighting with God’s blessings. Since there was no faith, God could not make them fight their battles to victory. So when the time had come for them to rejoice also, they were not able to rejoice. They lost their 40 years in the desert instead of reaping the fruits of Cannan…
We will have challenges of different forms. Our challenge may be a huge sickness, loss of a job, lack of children, lack of finance to run the family and so on. Whatever may be our challenge, God is taking care of us. If God is showing us something to do, let us not sit back thinking about our big problems, or keep wondering about what will happen if we do not succeed but proceed forward according to whatever He asks us to do. Always see the big picture. When the Israelites were working as slaves for years, they did not earn their due wages too. But God recompensed them on a single day. The Egyptian women gave away all their gold and other costly jewels to the Israelite women on the day they had left Egypt. Nothing will go uncompensated in God’s logic. We would have personally witnessed it in our days.
The bigger the challenge, the bigger the success!! So let us march towards it. When crossing the River Jordan, only when the feet of the priests carrying the “Ark of the Covenant” touched the water of the Jordan, the water retreated from their way. Once the water sensed the presence of God, it retreated. Imagine if they had been only praying “God, please help me” just standing on the banks of the river Jordan, they wouldn’t have crossed the Jordan at all. When we pray, God will show us how to take the cup of victory. Let us march towards the cup of victory.
On the journey towards Damascus, once Saul understood that Jesus was the Son of the living Almighty God, what did he do? He immediately asked, “Lord, what do you want me to do for you?”
Let the answer to this question be our motive for our life!!