May our good God grant you strong belief in the future life with him after death, equip you also with all you need to prepare for it through a transformed Christian living, here and now, that is nurtured by the word of God and the Eucharist. Happy Sunday! + John I. Okoye
The mystery of death and what follows have been occupying and tormenting human intelligence. Human intelligence, with all its resources has succeeded in giving us some intuition, some feeble information that is neither certain nor secure, but such that only satisfies our desire and curiosity. Every year, in the liturgy of the Church we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints and the day after the Commemoration of all the Dead. It all means that the mystery beyond death is proposed annually for our reflection as Christians. What is more is that through these celebrations our faith in a future life is solemnly reaffirmed. Even the liturgy of this Sunday takes up this reflection.
The word of God and especially the revelation of Jesus Christ give us a clear answer: Not only that there is life after beyond this earthly life but also our bodies will rise to new life one day. It is in 2nd Maccabees that we find for the first time, in the Old Testament an explicit affirmation of faith in the resurrection of the body. In the liturgy of today and precisely the first reading of today we come to know that seven sons and their mother were ready and decisive to undergo martyrdom and to sacrifice their young lives instead of contravening the law of God. Where did these young people find the strength and courage for their resolve? This is from the certainty that after their death, on account of observing the law of the Lord, God will raise them to a new and eternal life. In other words, it is good to die from the hands of men at the same time expecting from God the fulfillment of the hope to be with him in the new life of the resurrection.
In the gospel reading of today, Jesus gives an answer that is clearer, authoritative and convincing. The Sadducees (a sect of intellectual Jews) who were in opposition of the Pharisees (a more popular sect) negate the resurrection of the dead. In order to ridicule those who believe in it, the Sadducees trumped up a hypothetical question about the resurrection that was absurd and detached from reality. They presented a woman in fulfillment of the law of levirate (a custom of the ancient Hebrews and some other peoples by which a man may be obliged to marry his brother's widow to raise children in the name of the dead brother) who was married to seven brothers and they asked Jesus: At the resurrection whose wife will she be? In his reaction, Jesus indicated that their problem was a misunderstanding of the issue, because in the future life there will be no need to marry husbands or wives. The error of the Sadducees is from the fact that they imagine the future life is a continuation of the present one, with the same conditioning, exigencies and relationships; but it is not so. Resurrection rather signifies, the entrance into a new condition of life, for the risen will be similar to the angels and the sons of God. This is to say, that they will be in perfect union with God, participate in the fullness of divine life. It is a condition we cannot imagine or define with our finite human mind. In answering the Sadducees, Jesus further searched out from the Scriptures argument in favour of the resurrection. The passage he referred to, was from one of the books attributed to the authority of Moses which the Sadducees recognized: And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again in the passage about the burning bush where he calls God, 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 men are in fact alive. The great Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were united to God through faith and love and God made a covenant with them and promised them protection and salvation. Through this covenant God established a relationship with humans. The issue here is whether the relationship is severed by death. Is death powerful enough to break the ties that bind us to God? But it is God’s desire that the covenant endure. The later traditions of the Bible, in places where this issue is addressed, clearly state that God’s desire to be united with us is stronger than death. That is why, God is faithful in his promises; God who is lover of life cannot abandon his friends as victim of death and he cannot be impotent before death, otherwise he would not be God. He is not the God of the dead but of the living: all those who are worthy of the future life live by God.
There are circumstances in which Jesus better explains the resurrection: I am the resurrection and life: whoever believes in me even though he is dead will live and who is living and believes in me will never die (John 11,25; See also John 5, 28; 6,40; and 1 Cor 15,14.20). The unique condition that Jesus gives for the resurrection of life is to believe in him and be united to him as a branch is united to the stem of the vine. Another condition is to feed on him who is present in the word of God (Scriptures) and the Eucharist: I am the bread of life, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day.
DOCTRINE AND FAITH
(2 Macc 7, 1-2.9-14; 2 Thess 2,16-3,5; Luke 20, 27,34-38–10: 32nd Sunday of the Year C 2016)
The mystery of death and what follows have been occupying and tormenting human intelligence. Human intelligence, with all its resources has succeeded in giving us some intuition, some feeble information that is neither certain nor secure, but such that only satisfies our desire and curiosity. Every year, in the liturgy of the Church we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints and the day after the Commemoration of all the Dead. It all means that the mystery beyond death is proposed annually for our reflection as Christians. What is more is that through these celebrations our faith in a future life is solemnly reaffirmed. Even the liturgy of this Sunday takes up this reflection.
The word of God and especially the revelation of Jesus Christ give us a clear answer: Not only that there is life after beyond this earthly life but also our bodies will rise to new life one day. It is in 2nd Maccabees that we find for the first time, in the Old Testament an explicit affirmation of faith in the resurrection of the body. In the liturgy of today and precisely the first reading of today we come to know that seven sons and their mother were ready and decisive to undergo martyrdom and to sacrifice their young lives instead of contravening the law of God. Where did these young people find the strength and courage for their resolve? This is from the certainty that after their death, on account of observing the law of the Lord, God will raise them to a new and eternal life. In other words, it is good to die from the hands of men at the same time expecting from God the fulfillment of the hope to be with him in the new life of the resurrection.
In the gospel reading of today, Jesus gives an answer that is clearer, authoritative and convincing. The Sadducees (a sect of intellectual Jews) who were in opposition of the Pharisees (a more popular sect) negate the resurrection of the dead. In order to ridicule those who believe in it, the Sadducees trumped up a hypothetical question about the resurrection that was absurd and detached from reality. They presented a woman in fulfillment of the law of levirate (a custom of the ancient Hebrews and some other peoples by which a man may be obliged to marry his brother's widow to raise children in the name of the dead brother) who was married to seven brothers and they asked Jesus: At the resurrection whose wife will she be? In his reaction, Jesus indicated that their problem was a misunderstanding of the issue, because in the future life there will be no need to marry husbands or wives. The error of the Sadducees is from the fact that they imagine the future life is a continuation of the present one, with the same conditioning, exigencies and relationships; but it is not so. Resurrection rather signifies, the entrance into a new condition of life, for the risen will be similar to the angels and the sons of God. This is to say, that they will be in perfect union with God, participate in the fullness of divine life. It is a condition we cannot imagine or define with our finite human mind. In answering the Sadducees, Jesus further searched out from the Scriptures argument in favour of the resurrection. The passage he referred to, was from one of the books attributed to the authority of Moses which the Sadducees recognized: And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again in the passage about the burning bush where he calls God, 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 men are in fact alive. The great Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were united to God through faith and love and God made a covenant with them and promised them protection and salvation. Through this covenant God established a relationship with humans. The issue here is whether the relationship is severed by death. Is death powerful enough to break the ties that bind us to God? But it is God’s desire that the covenant endure. The later traditions of the Bible, in places where this issue is addressed, clearly state that God’s desire to be united with us is stronger than death. That is why, God is faithful in his promises; God who is lover of life cannot abandon his friends as victim of death and he cannot be impotent before death, otherwise he would not be God. He is not the God of the dead but of the living: all those who are worthy of the future life live by God.There are circumstances in which Jesus better explains the resurrection: I am the resurrection and life: whoever believes in me even though he is dead will live and who is living and believes in me will never die (John 11,25; See also John 5, 28; 6,40; and 1 Cor 15,14.20). The unique condition that Jesus gives for the resurrection of life is to believe in him and be united to him as a branch is united to the stem of the vine. Another condition is to feed on him who is present in the word of God (Scriptures) and the Eucharist: I am the bread of life, whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day.
If we Christians, who have entered a new relationship with Blessed Trinity through our incorporation into Christ at Baptism, are assured of future life, how are we to live it until it dawns? Indeed the future life has dawned. This is the eschatological hope in which we live by the grace given to us from God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Our future is already present and we are therefore called upon to conduct lives that are radically transformed. However, the future is not completely dawned and we find ourselves living both in this age and in the age to come. Thus we live proleptically; we anticipate future lives but we live them in the present. We are supposed to live like angels and sons and daughters of God who are already in the future life. As difficult as this may be, we have the eternal encouragement of Christ. We have the promise that God will strengthen and guard us. We have the instructions of our religious traditions and our present teachers of faith that direct our mind and hearts. When we live life of the future, we truly enable the future to dawn in the present. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye
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