November 11, 2019
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on November 10, 2019 at St. Austin Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; and Luke 20:27-38.
Every November, the Church invites us to explore our beliefs about what happens after we die. That’s why we remember our deceased loved ones every November.
In the three centuries before the birth of Christ, the Jews developed beliefs in angels and the resurrection, as documented in the books of Maccabees, among others. The Jews hadn’t yet agreed on what books would be included in their Bible, so this led to some arguments. The Pharisees accepted these traditions, but the Sadducees only accepted what was written in the ancient Torah. Since the Torah did not speak directly about life after death, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. Once again, it’s time for one of the worst puns in the theological canon: that’s why they were sad, you see.
In our gospel passage today, the Sadducees try to prove that life after death is ridiculous by taking one law in the Torah to a preposterous extreme. Jesus explains that it’s not the Torah that’s ridiculous; it’s the Sadducees’ expectation that life in heaven will be similar to life on earth.
Let us rejoice that God has mercifully included us in his plans for salvation!
Since the beginning of time, human beings have speculated about what will happen to us after we die. In many ways, it’s the ultimate question. It’s tied into our ideas about the divine and the purpose of living. I imagine our prehistoric ancestors gathered at campfires under the stars contemplating these questions, not very dissimilar to how college freshmen gather in dorm rooms at 2 am today to discuss the same ideas.
Sacred Scripture says a lot about life after death, and Catholicism has benefitted from many of the best minds contemplating eternity for the past 2,000 years; nevertheless, things remain murky. As Paul famously wrote: “At present, we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but [in the future, we shall see God] face to face” (1 Cor 13:12).
Most of us speculate about heaven from time to time. My experience, however, is that a lot of us speculate about it for very different reasons. Yesterday, as I buried a man who had lived a long, prosperous life, his widow found great consolation in speculating what it will be like to be united with him in heaven. Three days ago, I comforted a parishioner who’s worried because her dying son-in-law does not have a very loving image of the afterlife. Cartoons as varied as Tom and Jerry, The Simpsons, and South Park have come up with some very comedic bits imagining what heaven will be like. In Tennessee, I accused some young adults of speculating about the afterlife ad nauseum as a way to procrastinate the important work of scrutinizing the lives that they were currently living. Our extremely graphic passage from Maccabees today shows a devout Jewish family able to endure torture because they are confident that “the King of the world will raise [them] up to live again forever.”
The Sadducees were trying to make an argument to Jesus for why there couldn’t be life after death. They couldn’t comprehend how a woman who married seven men in succession would be married to all seven of them in the afterlife. Jesus’ response was: exactly. We can’t comprehend it, because we’re trying to make heaven into a carbon copy of earth. Our existence in heaven will be very different from how we currently live on earth.
What happens in heaven for those couples who have had a wonderful marriage on earth? What happens for those couples who’ve stuck it out together, even if they weren’t blissfully in love? What about for those people who have had multiple spouses, for whatever reasons? The fact of the matter is, we don’t know.
We want to understand what will happen to us and our loved ones when we die. But when it comes to talking about dying, death, and eternal life, it’s probably more important to approach it from the emotional side than the intellectual side. The reality is, we can’t understand. All we can do is trust in God’s providence.
We know that in heaven, we will be united with God in a powerful and profound way. Our relationships that we forged from our time on earth will still exist, but how we will relate to one another is beyond our comprehension.
In his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, Saint Paul paraphrased a passage from Isaiah that sums it up:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him.
We don’t have a clue what heaven will be like, but we know that our God is a loving God. If we try our best to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we will arrive in heaven on the last day. Whatever God has planned for us there, it will be wonderful beyond our wildest imagining.
But as Christians, we’re called to trust God in this lifetime, too. There are some situations that are beyond our ability to fix, where we must simply, prayerfully ask God to lead us towards a solution. There are other situations where we know a few small steps we can take, but we don’t know how God will bring us all together. We must trust that if we do our part, God will do God’s part!
For the next four weeks, as we complete our liturgical cycle with Luke and begin once again with Matthew, the Church invites us to continue speculating about eternity. Such speculation can help us put things in perspective. As one friend of mine said near the end of his life: “Whenever I start worrying about something, I just ask myself: will this matter in a million years?” Such contemplation can help us think about our relationship with God in new ways.
But we need to remember that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Whatever fruits we reap from speculating about the hereafter, it should also positively affect how we live our lives in the here and now.