XXXII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - Luke 20:27-38
This Sunday’s readings are about the resurrection, a central belief of our faith and a theme that needs to be revisited time and again, and nowadays more than before, since there are many people who do not belief anymore in the resurrection. For the Jews, the belief in the resurrection was a theological novelty, and that’s why the Sadducees, traditionalists in matters of religion - did not believe in it. They wanted to have a good laugh, and so they tried to prove to Jesus how ridiculous this belief is by inventing the story of the woman who got married to seven brothers, without having a child from any of them. Their thinking was: whose wife will she be, if there is resurrection? However, Jesus proved them wrong, because “you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” (Mt 22:29).
In fact, “those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God” (Lk 20:35-36). Following the Scriptures, there is no marriage neither sexual intercourse in paradise. In this, the Christian concept of Paradise is different from the Muslim Paradise, where the ones who are rewarded with it will enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, having plenty of perpetual virgins to satisfy them. Paul wrote that the time will come when God will be “all in all” (1 Co 15:28). And God will be our joy and our peace, our freedom and our salvation, our victory and our life.
And Jesus reminded the Sadducees of this simple truth that our God “is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” (Lk 20:38). In the first reading, taken from 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14, we find the same truth: God is the Lord of life, the God of the living, and those who put their trust in him find life. It was the faith in the faithfulness of God that led people to believe in the resurrection, and that gave the seven brothers the boldness to defy the king and to despise their own earthly lives:
“Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas for you there can be no resurrection, no new life.” (2 Mac 7:14)
The book of the Maccabees was written to record the Jewish revolt against the oppressive regime of Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, who forbade the Jewish religion and imposed the Greek culture and religion. The ones who refused to keep this law were persecuted, tortured and killed. They were the first martyrs, dying for keeping their faith. Since then, thousands have offered their lives in sacrifice in order to remain faithful to the God of life, sure that we can find life only in him. Hearing the story of the seven brothers, we must remember and honour the thousands upon thousands of people who preferred death to betrayal and apostasy, because God is the Lord of life and the Lord of their lives. Let us remember specially all those who live under islamic law in islamic countries, being second class citizens, always in danger of being accused and persecuted. May God give them the strength and the courage of those seven brothers.
Let us pray with the psalm:
Guard me as the apple of your eye.
Hide me in the shadow of your wings
As for me, in my justice I shall see your face
and be filled, when I awake, with the sight of your glory. - Ps 17:8,15
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