23 November 2019 - God of the living

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?
For all seven had been married to her.

The seemed like a perfectly legitimate objection on the part of the Sadducees. They were expecting that the resurrection would be nothing more than an extension of this present life. Yet Jesus revealed that while the resurrection does have a continuity with this present life, and while the dead do rise bodily, there is also a way in which it transcends the life known now to mortals.

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.

Some aspects of this present life are mere shadows of a greater glory yet to be revealed. This is why they have such value. Marriage helps to reveal something of the ultimate destiny of God and his bride, the Church. The lifelong bond of marriage educates and prepares for the permanent bond of the beatific vision. Marriage is no longer necessary in heaven where God will be all in all (see First Corinthians 15:28), where we are his, and he is ours, and all others whom we love imperfectly in this life are loved perfectly in him.

Let us not become so fixedly attached to the goods of this present age that they become obstacles that we set against our progress toward God. Every legitimate good here below is meant to aid in our pursuit of him.

We are looking forward to something more and greater than anything we can ask or imagine. We hope for more than mere extension of this present life. Instead, we look toward the eternal day in which God himself is alive. 

That the dead will rise
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 day is meant to be the day of our true wedding, the day when we know the fullness of lasting joy, when the last of our enemies is destroyed (see First Corinthians 15:26) and the final Abomination is pulled down.

I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Most High.