The Ones Who Will Rise by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)

The Ones Who Will Rise by Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time C

Piety

After he had died, they tortured and maltreated the fourth brother in the same way. When he was near death, he said, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”  (2 Maccabees 7:14)

Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry, but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (Luke 20:34-36)

Study

YEARS AGO, THE brilliant but cantankerous Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney was speaking to some students at a Christian college. When a student asked, "Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?"

Marney replied, "I will not discuss the resurrection with people like you: I don't discuss such things with anyone under 30. Look at you all: in the prime of life. Never have you known an honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotence, solid defeat, brick walls, or mortality. You're extremely apt and handsome—kids who have never in all of your lives been 30 miles from home, or 20 minutes into the New Testament, or more than a mile and a half from a Baptist or Methodist church, or within a thousand miles of any issue that mattered to a kingdom that matters. So, what can you know of a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised?"

In our Gospel today, the Sadducees are asking Jesus about the resurrection but don't get what Jesus is talking about, and they don't really want to get it from their world of dominating the positions of civil and religious power.

Unlike Carlyle Marney, however, Jesus is very patient and carefully adapts himself to the limited framework of the Sadducee's belief system to reach and teach them.

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection nor angels nor spirit (Acts 23:8). They denied individual personal survival beyond death or in immortality mainly because they thought that it is not in their canon of Scripture, which only entailed the first five books of the Old Testament [out of the 73 books in Bible for Catholic Christians].

For the Sadducees, continuity and survival came through progeny, the family, the clan, the tribe. They practiced Levite marriage described in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, to provide an heir after the husband had passed away.

And the Sadducees ask Jesus this question, “At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”  I believe the question I would have asked is, “Was this woman taking out life insurance policies on all these husbands?”

Very cleverly, Jesus alludes to a book in from their limited canon—Exodus 3:6 to prove that Moses does indeed teach the resurrection of the dead.

Some lessons to learn from Jesus:

1. Biblical-proof texting can get you the wrong answers. For example, sometimes Catholics join an ecumenical bible study, but there is no such thing as neutral bible study because it will reflect the biases of the presenter. Unless you know at least some basic Catholic apologetics and invest in a couple of good Catholic bible commentaries, it is best to stick to the Catholic bible studies.

For example, Jesus’ answer supports the Catholic doctrine of the communion of Saints and why we should read the lives of the Saints and ask them to pray for us.

The saints are not dead at all. They’re far more alive than we are on earth. Jesus said, God “is not the God of the dead but the living.” When the Lord spoke these words, he was talking about Moses, Abraham, and Isaac: three Patriarchs who had been “dead” for centuries. Therefore, since the majority of Christians pray for one another, like how others pray for Paul in our Second Reading, so how then, is it different to ask the Christians in heaven to pray for us on earth?

How do I deal with those who deny essential aspects of my faith? How do I respond to questions about my faith? [Catholic.com is an excellent go-to resource].

2. Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees also asserts that they are making false assumptions that the risen life is in complete continuity with our life on earth.  Heaven is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction (Benedict XVI).

As Bishop Baron says, which is the perfect answer for any modern-day Sadducees: “The body is a means of communication. The most intense personal communication possible is that which happens between two married people — sexual, psychological, and personal intimacy. Given the limitations and restrictions of our bodies here below, this type of intimacy is possible only with one other person in marriage.”

The heavenly state involves a body, too, but a transformed, transfigured, and elevated body — what St. Paul called a spiritual body. It is still a means of communication, but now it is so intense and spiritualized that it can mediate an intimate communion with all those who love the Lord. We are not less than bodily in heaven; we are super-bodily. We communicate more extensively and more intimately and with everyone. Hence, in heaven, we are not given to one person in marriage, but to all. All of this becomes plain in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

In essence, we’ll experience a marital level of intimacy with everyone in heaven, a state we are only capable of reaching with one person in this world.

3. Lastly, our Readings this Sunday about belief in the resurrection, show that, with the virtue of Fortitude, a believer gets the grace of martyrdom. The most prominent motive for the martyrs is their belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead and postmortem rewards and punishments.

In our First Reading, King Antiochus of the Assyrian empire was persecuting Jews because he thought that to obey the Torah was an act of rebellion. As one of the martyred family members said when he was near death: "It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life."

“Hell is truth seen too late.”  (The quote originated with Thomas Hobbes, an English Philosopher of the 17th century, and was also used by William Sloane Coffin in one of his sermons.) 

We don’t become angels for those who go to heaven, but we will have resurrected bodies that move with the speed of thought like angels.

Jesus gives a firm and definite answer: the paths of glory lead FROM the grave.

What will I be in eternity? And where?  

Amen.