Earthly life continues forever in glory of God himself

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

As we approach the conclusion of the liturgical year, our readings place increasing emphasis on the end of our earthly lives and the end of time. Both our first reading and Gospel this Sunday, in fact, speak of our chief hope -- that we may continue to live eternally with Christ Jesus in heaven. We take heart in Jesus’ promise that God “is not God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:38).

Our first reading this Sunday is taken from the Second Book of Maccabees, which covers the years 180 to 160 BC and is likely a condensation of a five-volume work written around 120 BC in Egypt by Jason of Cyrene. During a period of terrible persecution, the book was meant to edify the people, assuring them that fidelity to the Covenant and faith in God’s vindication were ultimately worth much more than chariots or armies.

The reading is part of a chapter (2 Maccabees 7:1-42) often entitled “The Martyrdom of a Mother and Her Seven Sons.” Set in the context of the persecution against Judaism by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, this text is especially important because it shows a very developed notion of an afterlife. The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” notes that “God revealed the resurrection of the dead to his people progressively” (para. 992). In the earlier parts of the Old Testament, belief in a personal afterlife is either non-existent or very vague.

In this reading, the mother and her sons are being tempted to renounce their faith and defile themselves before God. The oldest of the brothers told the king, “We are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws of our ancestors” (2 Mc 7:2). He and his brothers proved as good as their word, suffering horrible tortures rather than renouncing their faith. In their final words, however, they give us a glimpse of their hope in an afterlife: “You are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever” (2 Mc 7:9), “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him” (2 Mc 7:13), and “My brothers, after enduring brief pain, have drunk of never ending life under God’s covenant” (2 Mc 7:36).

Our Gospel text, written by St. Luke, also offers great insight into our belief in the resurrection of the dead. A group of Jewish leaders from the Sadducee party approach Jesus. The Sadducees were a sect within Judaism aligned with the priestly and governmental class. They refused to accept Judaism’s oral tradition and so theologized based solely upon a strict interpretation of the written word of the Torah. One area in which the Sadducees disagreed with the other major Jewish religious sect of the day, the Pharisees, was on the question of an afterlife. The Pharisees believed in life after death, whereas the Sadducees did not-- it is this disagreement which begins the current scene.

The Sadducee delegation poses a question to Jesus: “There were seven brothers. The first one married and died childless. Next, the second brother married the widow, and then the third and so on. All seven died without leaving her any children. Finally the widow herself died. At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” (Lk 20:29-33a). With this question, the Sadducees hoped to mock Jesus and the Pharisees for their belief in an afterlife -- their intention was to show faith in the resurrection as presenting absurd problems.

Jesus, refusing to be drawn into the trick question, answered the Sadducees, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those judged worthy of a place in the age to come and in the resurrection of the dead do not” (Lk 20:34-35). In this, Jesus reveals that marriage, in this life, is concerned with the continuation of the human race. In the next life, when people die no more, the need to continue propagating the human species will no longer exist, and thus marriage will no longer exist; as the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” teaches, “marriage is a reality of the present age which is passing away” (para. 1619).

Jesus then goes to the very heart of the Sadducees’ religious belief. He asserts that they are wrong when they say that there is no Pentateuchal evidence for belief in an afterlife. Jesus reminds them that Moses, kneeling before the burning bush, spoke to the Lord as “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Lk 20:27). Now, Jesus reasons, why would the Lord so reveal himself if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died and simply gone out of existence? Why would God identify himself in relation to beings that had ceased to be forever? In this way, Jesus reasons, “God . . . is not God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk 20:38), that is, the nature of God is our surest hope that earthly life does not end in the darkness of the void, but rather continues forever in the glory of God himself.
Msgr. Fell is a Scripture scholar and director, diocesan Office for Priest Personnel