Today’s Reflection
Gospel: Lk 20:27-38
November 6, 2022 | Sunday

Today’s Gospel

Then some Sadducees arrived. These people claim that there is no resurrection, and they asked Jesus this question, “Master, in the law Moses told us, ‘If anyone dies leaving a wife but no children, his brother must take the wife, and any child born to them will be regarded as the child of the deceased.’ Now, there were seven brothers: the first married, but died without children. The second married the woman, but also died childless. And then the third married her, and in this same way all seven died, leaving no children. Last of all the woman died. On the day of the resurrection, to which of them will the woman be a wife? For all seven had her as a wife.”

And Jesus replied, “Taking a husband or a wife is proper to people of this world, but for those who are considered worthy of the world to come, and of resurrection from the dead, there is no more marriage. Besides, they cannot die, for they are like the angels. They are sons and daughters of God, because they are born of the resurrection.

Yes, the dead will be raised, as Moses revealed at the burning bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For God is God of the living, and not of the dead, for to him everyone is alive.”

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel Reading recounts the only discourse of Jesus with the Sadducees whom Luke describes in terms of what they deny—the resurrection. A joke has it that on account of their disbelief in the resurrection, they are said to be sad and thus get to be called Sadducees. There is a grain of truth in this joke. Somehow, they can indeed be sad—sad in the sense that their horizon is confined between birth and death. Their life and hope end in their graves or at least in the world of the dead characterized by darkness and hopelessness.

Because they believed that nothing salvific or hopeful awaits them after death, the Sadducees—who were then the ruling elites—were bent at making the most of their life on earth. They connived with the oppressive rule of the Romans—a rule which had marginalized and impoverished a great majority of the Jewish populace. Jesus was then getting a lot of followers from the ranks of the oppressed populace that the Sadducees sought ways of getting rid of him. In the Gospel, they attempt to discredit Jesus by asking him a silly question that aims at making resurrection look ridiculous. But Jesus counters them by making it clear that the resurrection is real for the God who is revealed to Moses in the burning bush is the God of the living and not of the dead. They eventually succeeded in getting Jesus crucified. But they were definitively proven wrong when the Lord rose from the dead.

To some extent, we also tend or, at least, get tempted to limit our horizons between birth and death. This is especially the case when we happen to be affluent or powerful. Wealth and power can tempt us to live as if there were no God, to live as if we got totally annihilated at death. What then is wrong with living a life with no sense of the resurrection or no belief in God?

An answer lies at the joke about the Sadducees above: We too are likely to become sad. Like the Sadducees, we shall more probably become indifferent to the suffering of others. Worse, we shall end up supporting oppressive structures that advance our personal interests. We may end up living like a rich fool in one of Jesus’ parables. This fool lives as if there were no God and his neighbor did not exist. When his land brings forth a bountiful harvest he remains unmindful of his starving neighbors and only thinks of maximizing his pleasure: “relax, eat, drink, and be merry” (Lk 12:19c).

Eventually, when our sources of earthy or ephemeral happiness (power and wealth) come to an end, we may end up depressed. Once our depression becomes unmanaged, we may be led to taking our very life—a life which, in the ultimate sense, is not ours but is owed to God. (Fr. Lazaro N. Ervite, OSA) /Vulnerasti, 2022