November 11, 2007 Year C
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time/24th Sunday after Pentecost
Reflections on the Readings
By Dennis Hankins
2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15
2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Luke 20:27-38
Theme: On Being Sons of the Resurrection
If in this life only we had hope we would be hopeless.
Evil and wicked men are all about us; for not all have faith. "But the Lord", St. Paul continues, "Is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from evil." Today's readings call us to remain unspotted from the world and to fight the good fight of faith. We are not even to absorb into our thinking or acting the spirit of this age. Evil and wicked persons have evil and wicked ideas about life and God, but we are not to be conformed to this world.
The sons and daughters of the resurrection remind a wicked and adulterous generation that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And as God's sons and daughters we are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot and should not be hid. We must be as a lamp on a light stand and give light to all in the house. Let your light shine!
The testimony and witness we bring to the world is life giving. As the seven sons and mother in the Maccabees passage reveal, it is not always convenient to testify to the power and life of God. But we cannot accommodate the extreme of the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection. Their thinking clouded their understanding of the life that is now and is to come.
Jesus has made us heirs of his life. It is this supernatural life that raises us to a new dimension of living. Jesus said to the woman at the well, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." And it is this new life in Christ that opens our understanding to life evermore. It is Jesus who said, to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"
In this life marriage is an icon of Christ and his Church. Marriage is a sacrament because it is the relationship that explores and reveals the relationship of Christ with His Church. In the resurrection, marriage as an icon is not necessary, being fulfilled in the marriage supper of the lamb, where the Church is revealed as a bride adorned for her husband.
It is clear husbands and wives will not be as such in the world that is to come. However, nor will we be strangers but fellow heirs of the grace of life. In that fullness of joy will we walk hand in hand as sons and daughters of God, sons and daughters of the resurrection.
Let us pray: Dear Jesus, out of sin and death have you raised me to abundant life. I ask that the power that raised you from the dead saturate my thoughts, my words and my deeds. As a son of the resurrection you have seated me with you in heavenly places. Ever more may I seek those things that are above; and live among men as a son of the resurrection. Amen.
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