November 2022 – 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14, 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 and Luke 20:27-38 The readings invite us to consider the true meaning of the Resurrection in our lives.
The first reading affirms the Jewish theology of martyrdom and the resurrection of the righteous. The intense sufferings, to which good Jews were subjected in the first century B.C., led them to the conviction that God’s justice would reward the faithful in the afterlife and also punish the wicked.
With today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps. 17), we proclaim our Faith in God and ask him to protect us and, after death, to let us contemplate his face: “Keep me as the pupil of your eyes, hide me in the shadow of your wings; … I in righteousness shall contemplate thy face: when I awake I shall be satisfied with thy image” (v. 8:15)
In the second reading, St. Paul encourages the Thessalonians, who were awaiting the Parousia (the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead), to trust in God’s faithfulness because he would strengthen their hearts in every good work and word.
Today’s Gospel affirms the victory of God’s love over the power of death. Jesus speaks of God as the God of the living because the righteous who rise from the dead will have life in Heaven
The context
Jesus has entered the holy city of Jerusalem (cf. Lk. 19:28-38) and in the last days of his preaching is questioned by some Sadducees. The Sadducees, a portion of the people of Israel, were essentially clerical, priesthood-bound, deeply conservative and traditionalist. They practiced a fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures, favoring the Torah (the Pentateuch), while they did not consider the prophets and sapiential writings to be revelatory. And precisely because the resurrection of the dead is not found in the Torah as a truth to be believed, the Sadducees rejected it, unlike the Pharisees and Essenes, who instead professed it as the ultimate destiny of the righteous.
The central theme
In the discussion with Jesus, the theme of resurrection emerges as central. The case that
is presented is paradoxical: a woman widowed seven times, whose wife will she be at the resurrection? The case itself is evidently a pretext to provoke a stance on Jesus’ part. It is precisely Jesus’ response that is of interest because it touches on a central question of faith with very important repercussions for life. Can we Christians say that the resurrection from the dead has concrete impact on the way we live? Can there be a Christianity without a resurrection perspective? Yes, one can reduce Christianity to
an ethic, an observance of norms and good works thus relegating it to something that begins on earth and remains on earth. But no Christian act is such without implying a relationship with the resurrection, with divine life being poured into us. The danger is to establish a relationship with God totally aimed at this life, where we remain in this world’s choices and logics of success, accomplishment, achievement.
Jesus responds with authority, interpreting the idea of resurrection differently: he reveals that this world passes away and that the newness of the kingdom of heaven will no longer contain the necessity inscribed in the biological life of men and women. For Jesus, there is a radical contrast between this world and the world to come, not because this earth and heaven are to be destroyed and return to nothingness, but in the sense that the world to come is a reality other than the one we know: those who, on the basis of the universal judgment by God (cf. Mt 25:31- 46), will be deemed worthy, the “blessed of the Father” (Mt 25:34), will enter it. The judgment will cause a crisis and sorting: those on earth who have lived according to God’s will will take part in the Kingdom. On those who, on the other hand, have contradicted this will, which is love, nothing but love toward others, that is, on the “cursed” (Mt 25:41), there is no word in the Gospel according to Luke: on them a total silence, as if they were not worthy of being raised from the nothingness of death… This is how Jesus lifts the veil on the reality of the other world, in which there will be an unimaginable re-creation, a radical transfiguration that we can only glimpse by thinking of angels, God’s messengers, non-mortal, non-corruptible creatures. Jesus adds, moreover, that in the Kingdom all activity of continuation of the species, therefore all sexual activity, will cease, for one will no longer die.
Finally, Jesus begins his counter argument by pointing out the Sadducees’ ignorance about the existence and nature of life after death. First, he provides biblical evidence about the real existence of resurrection when God said to Moses from the burning bush, “I am the God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3 :1-6). Since God claims at the time He is speaking to Moses that He is the God of the patriarchs, these three patriarchs must still be living at the time of Moses, 600 years after their deaths. Therefore, God must somehow support the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by granting them resurrection and eternal life: “Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live by Him” (Luke 20:38). Jesus, using the very sacred text of the Torah, responds to the Sadducees regarding their anti-resurrection belief and, therefore, the resurrection of the body can be proven by the Torah itself. Second, Jesus explains that the afterlife will not be just an eternal repetition of this life. Things will be different after our death. Normal human relationships, including marriage, will be transformed, and those whom God deems worthy of resurrection and heavenly life with Him will be immortal, like angels and, therefore, are “children of God.”
Thus Jesus replies to the Sadducees who also denied the existence of angels and spirits.
For good workers
– We live as Resurrection people: this means that we must not lie buried in the tomb of our sins and bad habits. Instead, we are to live a joyful and peaceful life, constantly experiencing the true Presence of the Risen Lord who gives us the assurance that our bodies will also be resurrected.
– God’s faithfulness is eternal, it cannot change: God’s love is eternal, it cannot change! It is not limited in time: it is forever! It is to go on and on! He is faithful forever and waits, accompanies each of us, with this eternal faithfulness.
P Joby Kavungal RCJ
TREZZANO SUL NAVIGLIO – MILAN