Nov.6th, 2016: 32nd Sunday in
Ordinary Time, Year C.
2 Thessalonians
2:16B3:5; Luke 20:27-38.
AIM: To explain
Jesus teaching about life beyond death.
What will happen to us when we die?
Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle? And if there is
life beyond death, what will it be like? Which of us has never asked questions
like those? What better time to consider them than on this Sunday, when the
gospel reading contains Jesus= teaching about life beyond death?
Jesus= critics present him with a
hypothetical and deliberately absurd case about a woman who has been married to
seven husbands. Jesus might have told his questioners that the case was too
frivolous to merit comment. Instead Jesus shows himself, here as elsewhere, to
be a model teacher by using his opponents= attempt to show him up as the
occasion for serious teaching about the future life.
Which of the woman=s seven husbands will have her as his
wife after death, Jesus= critics want to know. Jesus= answer falls into two parts. First,
he says that life beyond death is not a prolongation of life on earth. It is
something completely new: not merely life after death, but rather life beyond
death. That is the meaning of Jesus= statement that Athose who are deemed worthy to attain
to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage.@ A fundamental purpose of marriage is the continuation of the
human race through the procreation of children. Beyond death there is no need
for more children to be born.
The second part of Jesus= answer addresses his critics= contention that the idea of a future
life is absurd. On the contrary, Jesus tells them, our own Scriptures clearly
imply the resurrection when they represent Moses addressing the Lord as Athe God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob; and he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for
to him all are alive.@ Those final words are crucial: all are alive to God, even
those who have died. Before him, Jesus is saying, those long dead patriarchs
remain alive.
Jesus= way of interpreting Scripture may
not be ours. But his teaching is not hard to grasp. His fundamental point is
that our hope of life beyond death is not based on wishful thinking, but on the
nature of God himself. He is not just a philosophical Afirst cause,@ an Aunmoved mover,@ or the Agreat architect of the universe.@ God is all those things, yet he is
infinitely more.
The God whom Jesus reveals is our
loving heavenly Father, who enters into a personal relationship with us B a relationship of love. This love
relationship cannot be terminated by death, any more than God=s relationship of love with his Son
was ended by Jesus= death. I learned this very early, through my mother=s death when I was only six years old.
A few days after my mother=s funeral, my father told me: AOur love for Mummy continues, and her
love for us. We must continue to pray for her. She is with God. He is looking
after her. Our prayers can help her.@ That made sense to me when I was
only six. It still makes sense to me more than seven decades later. I pray for
my dear mother by name in every Mass I celebrate.
Paul is referring to this love
relationship when he prays in our second reading: AMay our Lord Jesus Christ and God our
Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope
through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed
and word.@ And in his letter to the Romans Paul
says that this love extends beyond this world: AI am certain that neither death nor
life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future,
nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord@ (8:38).
This much is certain, then, about
life beyond death. It is not a prolongation of present existence, but something
totally new. And it is based not on wishful thinking, but on the nature of God
himself as a God of love. Everything beyond that remains uncertain. The
resurrection life lies so far outside our experience that it can be described
only in symbols and images. Jesus mentions one in today=s gospel: Aangels.@ The Book of Revelation, which is an
extended vision of the life of heaven, used other images: white robes (6:11,
7:9), stars (12:1), and harps (14:2). Those images are poetry, not prose. Like
all poetic images, they are not meant to be taken literally.
Jesus Christ does not offer us a
faith that answers every question curiosity can propose. He gives us a faith by
which to live and die. Central to that faith is Jesus= assurance in today=s gospel: ATo [God] all are alive.@ When Jesus says Aall@, he really means it. He is speaking
not only about us who await death. He is speaking also about those who have
already gone home to God, to live with him forever. In John=s gospel Jesus says he is going to
his AFather=s house ... to prepare a place@ for us (14:2). When we come to die,
we shall find that Jesus has gone ahead, and is waiting to welcome us to the
place he has already prepared for us.
Meanwhile our task is to prepare for
that great encounter and homecoming not by worrying about the details, but by
living to the full here and now. To help us do this Jesus offers here at the
Eucharist the treasure of his truth at the table of the word, and the treasure
of his love at the table of his body and blood.
When we encounter Jesus at the end of
life=s journey, will we be meeting a
familiar and well loved friend? Or will he be a stranger at whose approach we
shrink in fear? The answer to that
question lies in our hands, right now. Out of his great love for us God permits
us to choose what that great final encounter will be like.
It is the most important choice we shall ever
have.
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