32nd. Sunday Year (C)
(2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Luke
20: 27-38)
In the first reading from the second book
of Maccabees you heard the words:
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.
Today, people who do not frequent Church
might have thought on hearing those words that they were from some Muslim source,
for on TV and in news bulletins we so often see and hear of predominantly
fanatical Muslims shouting out defiance to the West and boasting of their
willingness to die for what they say is the cause of Islam in the hope that in
the process they might slaughter as many enemies as possible and subsequently,
as patriots or perhaps martyrs, win themselves a life of anticipated delights
in heaven.
Here, we cannot avoid the fact that we are
dealing with people whose religious belief is very strongly orientated towards
a better life to come after death on earth, and in that they challenge us to
appreciate more and to practice better what commitment our faith in Jesus
Christ risen from the dead for our eternal salvation requires of us.
This is most salutary for us because, in
Western society, we are surrounded today by people so sated with possessions,
so occupied in the business of life and with the multitude of diverse pleasures
available, that they have but the faintest desire for a heavenly life to come,
since its appearance on their horizon would necessarily herald the end of the earthly occupations and
satisfactions in which they are so engrossed.
Even apparently devout religious people who openly profess their belief
in a heavenly life to come seem, in comparison with the afore-mentioned
zealots, to be spiritual wimps in so far as they show themselves so hesitant,
wavering, and fearful in their response to any call of Jesus that would lead
them to prepare seriously for their heavenly fulfilment, even though, as I say,
they acknowledge Him readily enough in words to be the Conqueror of Death and
Lord of Life for all who believe in Him.
There is also very prominent, of course,
that pseudo-belief in heavenly life regularly and somewhat sickeningly
manifested by non-Church-goers when a loved one (of whatever character) dies
and the mourners are so openly sure he or she is ‘in heaven; looking down from
heaven now’.
The fact is that Christian doctrine is
intimately attuned to our humanity; and those who have suffered child loss most
acutely appreciate that the Catholic and Christian hope arising from Jesus’ own
Resurrection and His promise to us of life eternal, is so beautifully
responsive to our human experience (loved ones departed but not lost; loved
ones still able to be touched and helped by our prayers) that without it human
life can potentially become so bitter that the godless escape-hatch of suicide
is never far away.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that
the zeal of many self-sacrificing militants seems to be closely identified with
fanaticism, springing from religious ignorance, political manipulation,
long-kindled memories of humiliations and deprivations of various sorts in past
history currently being stoked up into religious intolerance and a burning desire
for racial and personal revenge. Such
fires of hatred now burn so hot in these zealots, that their minds are no
longer able to clearly appreciate, nor can their hearts calmly meditate, the
faith they claim to promote; and whilst proclaiming ultimate reverence for the
message of the Prophet, it is the present preaching of radical fire-brands and
the satisfaction of their personal feelings of racial hatred that actually rule
their lives and claim their allegiance.
Now all this is a warning for us Catholics
and Christians: for we have to be strong with a strength that comes from the
unquenchable hope arising from our commitment and obedience to Christ and His
teaching in Mother Church, to His Personal presence and the sure, intimate, guidance of His most Holy Spirit in the details of our lives, not from blind
human passions or political motivations.
If then, bearing in mind the prominence
given to martyrdom in our current political situation, we consider carefully
today's Gospel reading, we can hopefully learn something more about the true
nature of our Christian hope and confident expectation of resurrection after
death and eternal life to come in heaven.
The ignorance of many Catholics leaves
them with thoughts (and fears) of a faint and fragile heavenly experience
totally at variance with, and for some opposed to, anything we know of life as
experienced and loved here on earth. And
so, whereas we have gun-toting zealots eager
about a heavenly future they fondly imagine to be sensual and sexual in such a
way and to such a degree as to perpetuate some of the worst aspects of human
society and life here on earth; conversely, many Catholics and Christians have
little or no enthusiasm or longing for what they conceive to be a heaven, long
in extent but short in content, so to speak; a heaven that can hardly even
begin to be imagined and is therefore quite unable to afford any appreciable
comfort in, or fulfilment of, their present human life experience. In this situation it is obvious that we
should learn something more about the true nature our Christian hope for
resurrection and life to come.
Let us therefore turn to Jesus speaking to
us in today’s Gospel reading:
The children of this age marry and are
given in marriage, but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in
marriage. They can no longer die, for
they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the Resurrection.
Jesus is speaking there, with total
realism and complete absence of sentimentality, of the root condition of
humanity on earth, which is that human beings inevitably die and therefore,
according to God’s plan, marry in order that through new birth -- the fruit of
married love and commitment – the death of individuals might not bring about
the depredation or even extinction of mankind as a whole.
Now, those counted worthy to attain
the resurrection and the age to come will not marry because human life will no
longer be imperilled by death, Jesus said.
Does that mean, therefore, that an ice-cold, totally sanitized, picture
of heaven is confirmed? Far from it, for
the direct implication of Jesus’ words is, on the contrary, that those who
attain to life in the eternal Kingdom of God will no longer be ordinary
human beings capable of nothing better or greater than merely ordinary
human joys and disappointments, fulfilments and losses, but rather that they
will be as Jesus literally said:
Equal to the angels and sons (in Jesus) of God.
Their life will be not merely enriched but
transfigured; having been born again, not of flesh and blood, but of
God, as St. John tells us in his Gospel:
As many as received Him, to them He gave
the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were
born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of
God. (John 1:12-13)
Resurrection in Jesus, therefore, will
mean a transfiguring re-birth for human beings who, thereby, will become children
of God and members of the family of God: no longer subject to the earthly
limitations of human frailty, the daily incursions of sin, and death’s
relentlessly advancing depredations, but finally able to appreciate and respond
wholly and unreservedly to heaven’s offer of personal fulfilment, transcendent
joy, and eternal blessedness, together with like-minded brothers and sisters
all as one praising the glory and goodness, the beauty and truth, of their
heavenly Father.
That fulfilment, those joys, that
blessedness, of heaven will not be alien to our human mind and heart, because
they filled the mind and heart of Jesus Our Lord and Saviour, Who, in His
sacred and perfect humanity on earth delighted entirely in God the Father:
If you keep My commandments, you will
abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His
love. (John 15:10-11)
And Jesus assures His disciples and us
what ‘abiding in His love’ will mean:
I have told you this so that My joy may be
in you, and your joy may be complete.
Just consider: that
death-embracing-and-surmounting, heaven-ascending and home-going joy that
filled Jesus’ own human heart as He rose from the dead and returned to His
Father’s side will, He promises, abide in us and will -- as we open ourselves
up to it -- gradually bring our joy to the supreme fullness of our own
personal capacity for receiving and giving love, so that eternity for each
of us will be the timelessly abiding instant of an ecstatic sharing in the
sublime love which is the Holy Spirit eternally embracing and holding the
Father and His only-begotten Son in the oneness of divine Trinity.
How can we continually open ourselves up
to such a treasure?
By thinking
on it more deliberately and appreciatively in our mind (for example, do you
recall any of the many occasions of Our Lady coming down from heaven and being
seen by thousands and heard here on earth? do you read any of the numerous
saints who have learned from visions of the living Jesus?) and treasuring
it more lovingly in our heart by devout aspirations and grateful acts of
thanksgiving to God, acts of joyous commitment to His will and the service of
our neighbour. And above all by making your own the words of Jesus
telling of His Personal longing to be once again with His Father in heaven; and
telling us of the family and home, feast and fulfilment, awaiting us in God’s
Kingdom as His adopted children.
It has been rightly said by Dr. Johnson
that, for the most part, Christian people do not so much need to be told what
they have never heard, as to be reminded of what they have already heard but
have now, in fact, largely forgotten.
That means that too many do not try sufficiently to appreciate what
Jesus has won for us and what the Father offers us through the Spirit. Listen therefore to a passage from our
Scriptures, written in the early years of the growth of Mother Church, when
some Christians – like the seed sown on rocky ground in Jesus’ parable --
living in the world and too much for the world, had become half-hearted in
their faith:
I know your works, that you are neither
cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and
neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of My mouth.
What was the trouble? It was the same trouble that so many of us
Westerners suffer from today:
Because you say, 'I am rich, have become
wealthy, and have need of nothing'--and do not know that you are wretched,
miserable, poor, blind, and naked. (Revelation 3:15-17)
People of God, our readings today, heard
in the context of modern events, have something to say to us which these very
events we are experiencing might hopefully encourage us to take notice of:
(God) is not the God of the dead but of the
living.
The Father is God for those who are striving to live in Jesus by the Spirit,
wanting, praying, to be led ever forward by the Spirit; the lukewarm prefer to
remain where they presently find themselves comfortable and with easy, earthly,
options to hand, and yet they are in very grave danger of suffocating their
faith and incurring personal rejection by God.
There is another such passage from today's
second reading, where Paul prays for his Thessalonian converts saying:
May the Lord direct your hearts to the
love of God and to the endurance (patience) of Christ.
That is, Paul prays that Christ's love of
the Father, that Christ's continuance in that love through thick and thin,
might characterise his converts. He
wants none to be spiritually idle, lukewarm, and dying; he wishes rather, that
they live ever more fully, as Jesus said: steadfastly waiting upon God and
trusting in His Spirit, resolutely loving Jesus with their whole mind, heart,
soul, and strength, in and through all the ups and downs of life.
People of God, the teaching of the
Scriptures before us today, and the baleful examples of both fanatical excess
and supine indifference in our modern multi-cultural but increasingly
humanly-uncultured society, should give us a salutary spiritual jolt to wake up
and strive afresh to live as true Catholics and Christians.
