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Sacred Scriptures/Liturgy- Commentary on Sunday's Readings |
God is not god of the dead
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFMCap, Pontifical Household Preacher
www.zenit.org
2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2
Thessalonians 2:15-3:5; Luke 20:27-38.
In reply to the question that the Sadducees had posed to trap him
about the woman who had had seven husbands on earth, Jesus above all
reaffirms the fact of the resurrection, correcting at the same time
the Sadducees' materialistic caricature of it.
Eternal beatitude is not just an increase and prolongation of
terrestrial joys, the maximization of the pleasures of the flesh and
the table. The other life is truly another life, a life of a
different quality. It is true that it is the fulfillment of all
man's longings on earth, yet it is infinitely more, on a different
level. "Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and
to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in
marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels."
At the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus explains the reason why
there must be life after death. "That the dead will rise even Moses
made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out 'Lord,
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,' and he
is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are
alive." Where in that is the proof that the dead rise? If God is
defined as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is a God of the
living, not of the dead, then this means that Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob are alive somewhere, even if they have been dead for centuries
at the time that God talks to Moses.
Interpreting Jesus' answer to the Sadducees in an erroneous way,
some have claimed that marriage has no follow-up in heaven. But with
his reply Jesus rejects the caricature that the Sadducees present of
heaven, a caricature that suggests that it is a simple continuation
of the earthly relationships of the spouses. He does not deny that
they might rediscover in God the bond that united them on earth.
Is it possible that a husband and wife, after a life that brought
them into relation with God through the miracle of creation, will
not in eternal life have anything more in common, as if all were
forgotten, lost? Would this not be contrary to Jesus' word according
to which that which God has united must not be divided? If God
united them on earth, how could he divide them in heaven? Could an
entire life spent together end in nothing without betraying the
meaning of this present life, which is a preparation for the
kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth?
It is Scripture itself, and not only the natural desire of the
husband and wife, that supports this hope. Marriage, Scripture says,
is "a great sacrament" because it symbolizes the union between
Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Is it possible that it be
eliminated in the heavenly Jerusalem, where there will be celebrated
the eternal wedding feast of Christ and the Church of which the
marriage of man and woman is an image?
According to this vision, matrimony does not entirely end with death
but is transfigured, spiritualized -- it loses those limits that
mark life on earth -- in the same way that the bonds between parents
and children or between friends will not be forgotten. In the
preface of the Mass for the dead, the liturgy says that with death
"life is changed, not taken away"; the same must be said of
marriage, which is an integral part of life.
But what about those who have had a negative experience of earthly
marriage, an experience of misunderstanding and suffering? Should
not this idea that the marital bond will not break at death be for
them, rather than a consolation, a reason for fear? No, for in the
passage from time to eternity the good remains and evil falls away.
The love that united them, perhaps for only a brief time, remains;
defects, misunderstandings, suffering that they inflicted on each
other, will fall away. Many spouses will experience true love for
each other only when they will be reunited "in God," and with this
love there will be the joy and fullness of the union that they did
not know on earth. This is also what happens to the love between
Faust and Margaret in Goethe's story: "Only in heaven the
unreachable -- that is, the total and pacific union between two
creatures who love each other -- will become reality." In God all
will be understood, all will be excused, all will be forgiven.
And what can be said about those who have been legitimately married
to different people, widowers and widows who have remarried. (This
was the case presented to Jesus of the seven brothers who
successively had the same woman as their wife.) Even for them we
must repeat the same thing: That which was truly love and
self-surrender between each of the husbands or wives, being
objectively a good coming from God, will not be dissolved. In heaven
there will not be rivalry in love or jealousy. These things do not
belong to true love but to the intrinsic limits of the creature.
[Translation by ZENIT]
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