Interesting enough, we just heard this gospel passage, I think only about a week ago, and
we hear it again, but the points it makes are very important, and so it's worth reading
on and reflecting again.
Here are the Sadducees are trying to trip up our Lord.
However, they don't believe in the resurrection of the dead, and so they try to trip up our
Lord by asking a question, a rather pointed question, but an interesting one, of a woman
who was married seven times to seven brothers.
Now, it was the Mosaic law that if the woman died childless, sorry, the first brother died
childless, she would marry the next brother, and so on.
It was very important.
In fact, it was a curse if you did not bear children.
That was a very important thing.
Now, here in this case, if they give our Lord, there are no children.
They all die, all the brothers first, and then the wife.
Now, they ask her, our Lord, and here's where they try to trip him up.
Well, then, whose wife is she?
She's married to all of them.
Whose wife will she be at the last time?
And our Lord, as he frequently does...
First, he gives a response.
It's a very, actually, it's a rather direct response, and a very beautiful one, if you
stop to think about it, and then he quotes or refers back to the Old Testament.
And the first, the response, well, she's not the wife of any one of them, once she's
in paradise.
Another way our Lord puts it, we are like angels.
We are children of God.
All our attention is focused on God, once we are in paradise, once we are in heaven.
But what he's also pointing to here...
Actually, we'll go on a little bit further, and we'll see what he's pointing to, because
when he refers to the Old Testament, he refers to Moses speaking to the burning fire.
Oops, an accident with the bush.
Recall, God told him when he asked his name, I am who am.
I am existence, itself.
What we have, we have from God.
But in any case then, Moses refers to Lord, the God who is, I am who am...
The God of, I, Jacob.
The God of Isaac.
The God of Jacob.
That actually starts in a chapter 2.
The Lord, caught in a trance, he spoke to Jesus.
He said to Jesus, yes, this is the call of God that I want.
He says, God is in danger.
God is poor.
That is the moment of prayer.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now, these three, by the time of Moses, were already long dead.
But God is the God of the living, says our Lord. For Him, they are alive. It points to
the immortality of our souls. Once our souls are separated from our bodies, our bodies
are dead, yes, but our souls, no, they continue to live. Life on this earth is not the end
for us. It is not the end. I like to put it, it is only the beginning of eternity. But
there is life after death. After our earthly death, there is yet another life.
It is a life that had no beginning for God. God had no beginning. He is eternal. And for
us also, we will have no end. There is no end. Eternity. And that is the point our Lord
is making here. That our souls are immortal. They go on living. And they will experience
already eternity, accordingly to our conduct here on earth. So you see, we must prepare
for that eternity, here and now.
We see here two things. One, that our souls are immortal. There is no end. And we will
all experience eternity. And once we are there, it is all the same for all of us. There is
no further marriage.
And our
one or two possibilities once we are there, after the end of time. And that is, either
eternal life with God, that is life with God for all eternity, which we call heaven, paradise,
or life without God for all eternity, which we call hell. So we have to prepare ourselves
now. We have to reflect on these things and prepare ourselves starting now. We don't know
when we will be called from this life, this life, the earthly life, which we call death.
And our eternity is fixed. We have to prepare now. Let us make that preparation for paradise.
Let us prepare for that. Let us work towards that, strive towards that. Pray for that, incessantly
every day. Not only for ourselves, but for all our loved ones as well. For everyone.
For all souls. That we arrive at that eternal life with God for all eternity. Praise be
Jesus in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.