THE HOPE IN THE RESURRECTION

XXXII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14

As usual, the first reading is connected to the Gospel, which speaks about the resurrection. Taken from 2 Maccabees, we read the story of the seven brothers who suffered martyrdom with their mother at the hands of Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria. They found their courage in their faith in God and their hope in the resurrection. So we are called to reflect on martyrdom and the resurrection. For the Christians, martyrs are those who pay with their lives for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Throughout the centuries, thousands have shed their blood because they refuse to turn their backs on Christ and they prefer to obey God instead of obeying the powers of this world. Stephen was the first martyr and since then there has been a multitude of believers who shared the fate of Jesus Christ. We may think that this is something of the past, but the truth of the matter is that in our days there are more martyrs than in the past. There are many countries, where the Christians have to go underground, living in the continuous risk of being arrested, tortured and killed. There are many countries where it is a crime to be a Christian. There are countries where all Christian symbols are forbidden. The Christians who live in peace and enjoy freedom cannot forget their brothers and sisters who suffer great hardships because of their faith. The Christian martyrs are people who do not use violence but suffer violence for their steadfast loyalty to Jesus Christ.

On All Souls day, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Catacombs and remembered all those who died or are still suffering for their faith:

“The celebration of the feast of all the dead in a catacomb - for me it is the first time in my life that I enter a catacomb, it is a surprise - tells us so many things. We can think of the lives of those people, who had to hide, who had this culture of burying the dead and celebrating the Eucharist here… It is a moment of bad history, which has not been overcome: even today there are some. There are many of them. Many catacombs in other countries, where they even have to pretend to have a feast or a birthday to celebrate the Eucharist, because in that place it is forbidden to do that. Even today there are persecuted Christians, more so than in the first centuries. This - the catacombs, the persecution, the Christians - and these Readings make me think in three words: identity, place and hope.

The identity of these people who gathered here to celebrate the Eucharist and to praise the Lord is the same as that of our brothers and sisters today in many, many countries where being a Christian is a crime, it is forbidden, they have no right. The same. This is the identity that we hear: it is the beatitudes. The Christian's identity is this: the Beatitudes. There is no other. If you do this, if you live like this, you are a Christian. "No, but look, I belong to this association, to this other... I am from this movement...". Yes, yes, yes, yes, all these things are good, but they are fantasies before this reality. Your identity document is this [he indicates the Gospel], and if you don't have it, movements or other groups are useless. Either you live like this, or you are not a Christian. Simply put! The Lord said this. "Yes, but it's not easy, I don't know how to live like this...". There is another passage of the Gospel that helps us to better understand this, and that passage of the Gospel will also be the "great protocol" according to which we will be judged. It is Matthew 25. With these two passages from the Gospel, the Beatitudes and the great protocol, we will show, by living this, our identity as Christians. Without this, there is no identity. There is the fiction of being Christian, but not identity.

This is the identity of the Christian. The second word: the place. Those who came here to hide, to be safe, even to bury the dead; and those who today celebrate the Eucharist secretly, in countries where it is forbidden.... I think of that nun in Albania who was in a re-education camp at the time of communism, and the priests were forbidden to distribute the sacraments, and that nun baptised secretly. The people, the Christians, knew that this nun baptised and the mothers approached her with their children, but she didn't have a glass, something to put the water in. Then she did it with her shoe: she took the water out of the river and baptised with her shoe. The Christian's place is everywhere, we don't have a privileged place in life. Some want to have it, they are "qualified" Christians. But they run the risk of staying with the "qualified" and abandoning the "Christian". What is the place of Christians? "The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God" (Wis 3:1): the Christian's place is in the hands of God, wherever He wants it. The hands of God, which are wounded, which are the hands of his Son who wanted to take with him the wounds so that they could be seen by the Father and intercede for us. The Christian's place is in Jesus' intercession before the Father. In the hands of God. And there we have the certainty, what happens, even to the cross. Our identity [the Gospel indicates] says that we will be blessed if they persecute us if they say everything against us; but if we are in God's hands wounded with love, we are right. This is our home. And today we can ask ourselves: but where do I feel most secure? In God's hands or with other things, with other certainties that we "borrow" but which in the end will decay, that have no consistency? These Christians, with this identity card, who have lived and live in the hands of God, are men and women of hope. And this is the third word that comes to me today: hope. We heard it in the second reading: that final vision where everything is remade, where everything is recreated, that homeland where we will all go. And to enter there you don't need strange things, you don't need sophisticated attitudes: you just need to show your identity card: "All right, go ahead". Our hope is in heaven, our hope is anchored there and we, with the rope in our hands, lean on each other looking at that bank of the river that we have to cross.” (HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS, Priscilla Catacombs on Via Salaria, Saturday, November 2, 2019)

All the martyrs are moved by the certainty that dying with Jesus they will rise with Jesus to eternal life. Our God is not a God of the dead but the God of the living.