What do martyrs like Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions understand that we don't?
We can witness to the LORD without fear. This is because the whole point of our witness is that it is directed toward the resurrection. Jesus tells us that we need not fear those who can kill the body. And we see just that in the book of revelation.
But after the three and a half days,
a breath of life from God entered them.
We don't rise immediately with Jesus on the third day. He is the first fruits. But the resurrection will give life to our bodies again as well. We arise to reward or we arise to judgment but we all live again. And yet, do any of us truly live like this? Do we not rather live as though death is the end, as though we need to get everything done that needs to be done beforehand, as though it is the greatest tragedy we can imagine?
There was a time when fearing death was justified. It was the time before the resurrection was revealed. But listen to the gospel antiphon: "Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death and brought life to light through the gospel." This itself is taken from Second Timothy verse 10 which says that "our savior destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel".
The Sadducees aren't necessarily being sincere when they ask about the resurrection. But be that as it may they betray their ignorance. They want to sort out things here below as if all must be arranged and accounted for at this present moment. What of the seven brother? What of the wife? Given that it wasn't fixed in this lifetime how could the resurrection neatly fit the pieces together?
Jesus said to them,
“The children of this age marry and remarry;
but 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;
and they are the children of God
because they are the ones who will rise.
The resurrection isn't just more of the same thing. It is a different sort of life. The symbols of fulfillment, of which marriage is one, give way to truly resting in God. Why do we and the Sadducees both get this wrong? Jesus explains in the parallel verse in Matthew, "You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (see Matthew 22:29). We may be acquainted with the words. But their true profundity hasn't yet sunk in.
even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called ‘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.”
This isn't a reading we would naturally infer without the help of the Holy Spirit revealing it to us. But now that we see it we see the great ones of the dead not reprising earthly life but precisely living to God, so that it can be said that "all are alive" and that their direction is now completely "to him".
As Christians, though we are still living in this world, we are called to begin to live toward heaven, to live more 'to God' than 'to the world'. May the Holy Spirit reveal this to our hearts.
O God, I will sing a new song to you;
with a ten stringed lyre I will chant your praise,
You who give victory to kings,
and deliver David, your servant from the evil sword
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