THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR C
Commentary of Fr. Fernando Armellini
A good Sunday to all.
Today's gospel passage answers a disturbing question we tend to discard. Where do we end up when this life of ours ends? We are born, fall in love, form a family, raise children, then come to the grandchildren, experience joys and sorrows, and nurture dreams and hopes, but one day, everything seems to end. Affections that we have nurtured and the relationships with loved ones are interrupted.
Then we must ask ourselves what the meaning of all this is, what we are doing in this world. It is not wise to eliminate this thought because it would give up what characterizes us as people. We know that our life has a beginning and an end; perhaps we will not find an answer to the question, but I have to ask myself where I come from and where I am going. Do I return to the nothingness of what was a gesture of love from my parents? Sadly, this universe will go on after me as if I had not passed this way, leaving any trace, as if I had never existed.
In that case, I also ask myself: Does it make sense to bring children into the world and deliver them to this destiny to be delivered to the monster that is death? Others believe it is useless to seek the hidden designs of a Creator; you just must live as if you indulge the impulse that suggests you enjoy the few days you spend on this earth. In the mosaic pavement of the Roman triclinium, we find the call to death: "memento mori" - 'remember that you must die.' What suggestion did they intend to give you? Enjoy life because the days you have left to live are few, so have fun.
Others, cultivating a life perspective enlightened by faith, consider it wise to live by noble, lofty values to build love. If there is no God, these answers may be reasonable; one might even think we are part of a universe that moves according to its laws, creates new lives, and then destroys them. Therefore, a heartless universe, which sometimes does good but does not do it out of love because it has no heart; sometimes does evil, but not out of hatred because it has no heart; it simply follows its laws.
But there is a God; this nonsense of the universe is unacceptable because we would be before a cruel god who creates man, is in love with life, and is even capable of entering into a dialogue with Him to show him love and then, in the end, destroy him. What answers were given to these questions in Israel? They interest us because, later, we will hear Jesus' response. Until the third century B.C., the Israelites did not have different conceptions from the other peoples of the Ancient Middle East and the Greco-Roman world; only the Egyptians were an exception.
When a person died, they believed they went to the realm of the dead, which was called by different names. The Israelites called it 'Sheol,' the Greeks called it 'hades,' after the name of the god who reigned over the world of the dead - 'Hades,' who lived with his wife Persephone, and the Latins called it 'ínferus,' the underworld. This world of the dead was characterized by darkness; the dead lived in the dust and moved like lavas, like shadows. In Hebrew, they called them 'refain' - shadows, zombies, who lived there in silence. We remember in the Odyssey Odysseus going down to 'hades.' There, he meets Achilles and congratulates him: 'You who was great on the earth, now you are the one who rules here,' and Achilles replies to him: 'Ulysses, do not mock me; I would rather be a peasant or a slave on earth than rule over the shadows.'
This was the conception of all the peoples of the Ancient Middle East and the Greco-Roman world, including Israel. All ended up in the realm of the dead: beggars, lords, slaves, old and young, good and evil. There was no judgment, reward for the good, or punishment for the wicked. The death of the wicked was viewed with complacency because everyone was happy now; even the one who wanted to be a Superman is again amid all the other shadows.
The Israelites did not consider this passage from the world of the living to 'Sheol' terrifying; they were not afraid of death. A lousy death was the violent, evil death, but whoever died burdened with years descended serenely to 'Sheol,' where he was sure to find all his ancestors. It is beautiful how Genesis describes Abraham's death: "Abraham breathed his last, dying at a ripe old age, grown old after a full life; and he was gathered to his people" (Gen 25:8). There was only one significant difference between the Israelites' conception and that of the pagan world. In the 'hades' of the Greeks, there was a god, 'Hades.' And in the conception of the Egyptians, it is 'Hamonra,’ that when the sun god came to the west, he followed his course and illuminated the world of the dead. The God of Israel had nothing to do with the world of the dead. The Lord, the God of Israel, was the God of the living.
In Jesus' time, the conception had changed. The Israelites had begun to think differently than the pagans. For a century and a half, they had started to speak not of the immortality of the soul, as did the Greek philosophers, but of the resurrection, that is, of the return to the life of this world, to life as it was before, but modifying it (later, we will tell how they expected this new life). How was this expectation of a resurrection born? It was the time of the rebellion of the Maccabees, during which many had paid with their lives for their allegiance to religion, and some wondered: 'Will not these people who have been faithful to the law partake of this joy when the new world comes?' Therefore, there began to be talk of a resurrection, but it was only reserved for the righteous who would have participated in the joy of the new world.
This was the resurrection in which the Pharisees believed and which we find in the reply that Martha gave to Jesus when he told her that her brother would rise again; she said: 'Of course, he was a righteous man; he will rise again at the last day in the resurrection of the righteous.' But few Israelites believed in this resurrection. It was believed in by the Pharisees, who, according to Josephus Flavius, numbered about 6000 in Israel, but the people did not think much about this resurrection. Let's hear now how the members of another Jewish sect, the Sadducees, thought. Let us listen:
"At that time, some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him, saying, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife, but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers; he first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection, whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus came to Jerusalem and spent the last days of his life teaching in the temple; it is there that the scribes approach him, the elders, and the chief priests, and they ask him questions, they lay snares for him, that they may accuse and condemn him. One of these days, in the esplanade of the temple, are the Sadducees, and they approach Jesus. According to Luke, it is the only time in the gospel that these characters appear. We have often heard of the Pharisees, but the Sadducees only appear in today's gospel passage.
Who were the Sadducees? They were wealthy in Jerusalem, those who had no scruples about collaborating with the Roman government and earning money. All the priestly aristocracy, the high priests, and those who directed the commerce around the temple all belonged to the sect of the Sadducees. They did not enjoy a good reputation among the people who, instead, esteemed the Pharisees because of their scrupulous observance of the Torah, and they were, moreover, simpler people.
These Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, and it may seem strange to us that even the high priests, who were always in contact with God, did not believe in another life. And we ask ourselves, what was the meaning of their pious prayers to the Lord, their burnt offerings and sacrifices that they offered to God? They were not (perhaps as we think) to make merits, to go to paradise, or to be counted among the righteous who would be resurrected in the future world. NOT. All the religious practices of the temple, which were administered by the priests and by the high priest Annas and Caiaphas, were directed toward obtaining the blessings of the Lord on the life of this world; they were not interested in the afterlife.
These priests, these Sadducees, presented themselves as the mediators of God's blessings. God's blessings were not directly obtained; if you were going to ask for blessings for the fields, the animals, welfare, and good health, you had to go through these intermediaries; they were the ones who implored from the Lord the favors of heaven with their sacrifices. It was a trade with God. And Jesus will be taken out of the way precisely because he condemned this commercial way of relating to the Lord: you offered him something and granted him his blessings.
This image of God is the opposite of the God preached by Jesus. The God of Jesus of Nazareth offers his love, blessings, and favors without conditions; there is no trade; he does good to all, bad and good; there is nothing to deserve from him; his love is free. That is why this sect of the Sadducees, which were all those of the priestly aristocracy, could not bear the proposal of God and the relationship with God that Jesus presented.
How did these Sadducees end up? After the national catastrophe of 70 A.D., when the temple and the city of Jerusalem were destroyed, and the Sadducees disappeared, there was no trace of them. Why did they not believe in the resurrection? The first reason was they were rich, well off, and with the money they had, what they would do in another life; if they invoked the Lord, it would be even better off here, in this world; the rest did not interest them. Also, they were rationalists; they believed only in what is proven, what is tangible, what is seen, what is touched; about the rest, about the beyond, they say, 'We know nothing about that, and we are not interested in it.'
And to ridicule the faith in the resurrection that the Pharisees preached, they had it easy because the way the Pharisees conceived the resurrection was ridiculous; it was very crude because they understood it as a return to the life of this world, naturally without the hunger, the sicknesses, the sufferings, the miseries, the misfortunes and also increasing out of all proportion all joys and all satisfactions. Then they could ask, for example, these Pharisees: Why does God then cause them to die and then make them come back again to the life of this world?
And let's keep in mind that the Sadducees did not accept the whole bible, but only the Torah. They had no sympathy for the prophets because they knew very well that the prophets had condemned very harshly the religious rituals that did not correspond to the adherence to God with the heart. It is important to remember this because they start directly from the text of the Torah, from Deuteronomy, to object to the resurrection. And Jesus, brilliantly, will answer them with another text from the Torah.
What do they ask him? They have understood that Jesus is on the side of the Pharisees, although in reality, Jesus conceives the resurrection in a completely different way than the Pharisees. They present a case to him; they address him with a polite title, and they make precise reasoning; they say, 'the belief in the resurrection is not compatible with the law of Moses because in the book of Deuteronomy, in chapter 25, there is the so-called levirate law,' which says that if a married man dies without children, the widow must not marry out of the family because then there would be problems of inheritance, she cannot marry a stranger; she must marry a brother of her dead husband to give offspring to the one who died childless.
So clearly, going back to the story of Sarah and Tobiah, we remember the poor Sarah, who had seven husbands die the same night she married. And they say there was a woman who had seven husbands; 'then, if the dead rise, if they return to this world as the Pharisees affirm, how do they arrange the situation, which is very complicated? She had seven husbands; who will be her husband at the time of the resurrection?' I think they burst out laughing...
If the resurrection is what the Pharisees intended, the objection of the Sadducees is valid; it's more than reasonable. The answer Jesus gives to the Sadducees is in two parts. Let us listen to the first one:
"Jesus said to them, ‘The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those 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.”
In the first part of his answer, Jesus introduces a distinction that should always be kept in mind between two realities, two worlds: the present world and the future world. A distinction that we already find in the apocalyptic literature where it is spoken, in Hebrew, העולם הזה - ha-olam hazeh - this world, and עוֹלָם הַבָּא - olam ha-ba: the hereafter, the world to come.
In this world, in the present time, it is the way of life that we all know well, that flows before our eyes: Here you marry, you have children, here you are born, here you die. The future world is not an improved continuation of this life; it is not awakening from the grave to resume the former life because, in that case, the Sadducees would be correct in denying the resurrection; it would make no sense for God to destroy life and then give it back to them, even if it were improved.
Since the future world is an entirely different reality than this one, Jesus says that quoting the Deuteronomy provision is meaningless because marriage exists in this world, not in the future world where they can no longer die; in the future world, those who have received the divine life no longer die, no form of death is present in the world to come. They are equal to the angels because they are sons and daughters of the resurrection; they are sons and daughters of God.
What does Jesus mean, and from whom do the angels receive life? Not from their parents but directly from God. Man, on the other hand, receives life in this world; biological life comes from the earth as all life forms do that we see coming from the earth; if man had only this life, his destiny would be like that of all other lives that come from the earth, but Jesus says God has given people his life. Biological life ends: the life God has given to man is eternal, therefore indestructible; they are sons and daughters of the resurrection, that is, they are begotten of God.
At this point, there are two random questions. The first one: We know life well in the present, but what will life be like in the future? I think that the danger is precisely that of the Sadducees and Pharisees, to imagine that the life of the future world is an extension of this one. So, we imagine the life of the future world by projecting the life we see here. NO. The future world is entirely different. We would be interested to know what it will be like. The answer that Paul gives us in chapter two of the letter to the Corinthians is this: “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” (1 Cor 2:9).
We will never know what awaits us; it is a mystery that has not been revealed to us, not because the Lord wills to increase the suspense, the surprise, but simply because our mind is incapable of understanding it. How can the fetus in its mother's womb imagine the life that awaits it when it is born? Here is the distinction between two worlds: the world in the mother's womb, which is the world in which we find ourselves today because we are in gestation, waiting for the birth to the world to come, to the world of God, and the child in the mother's womb cannot imagine life outside that womb.
Certain statements, specific prayers, even of many Christians today, unfortunately, still have an image of the resurrection of the dead like that of the Pharisees, that is a life that is an extension of this life but improved. No, it is entirely different.
The second question we all ask ourselves is this: Why didn't God make us immediately like the angels? That is, to make us be born already in the future world. Now, we must go through all the vicissitudes of this reality. How nice it would be to be born angels! The reason is that God can't do it because it won't be us; we are not angels. Because of our human identity, people have to make this way: go out of the earth, receive the divine life from God, and enter the ultimate world. The person coming from the earth has two lives, the biological one and the immortal one. We know the mortal body gets sick, old, and dissolves. This body we leave here does not enter the final world. The person with all his love history puts on another body, incorruptible, glorious, spiritual, with another spiritual body, as Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians.
Let's listen now to the second part of Jesus' answer:
“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.’”
To confirm what has been said, Jesus makes a biblical quotation and chooses it very well, taking it from the Torah in which the Sadducees believe also; he takes it from the third chapter of the Book of Exodus, where is the well-known story of the burning bush that burns and is not consumed and from which comes forth the voice of God who introduces himself thus: "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."
It is a strange form of God's self-presentation because the gods of antiquity, the pagan gods, were all gods of a particular place. Melkart was the god worshipped at Arabat Amon, currently in Amman. He ruled there and not elsewhere. The god Hadad was the god worshipped in Damascus. Amon was the god of the Egyptians and the god of Thebes. The God of Israel is not presented as the God of a place; does not say, 'I am the God of Jerusalem,' no; 'I am God who has established a relationship of love with the people, with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob.'
It is extraordinary how Jesus draws from the Pentateuch the foundation of the faith in the resurrection because it rests on the center of God's revelation in the Old Testament; God established a relationship of friendship with the people, with the patriarchs. God could have done without Abraham, but he established a relationship of love with him; God is faithful to his love and the power of death but cannot present Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob if they are dead forever. It would be a God who presents himself as unfaithful to the love he has established with these people.
This means that death cannot destroy those bonds that God has established. So, the answer to the question of man's destiny is not to be sought in our instinctive rejection of death, nor the reasonings about the immortality of the soul, however admirable they may be, but in that relationship of love which the psalmists have already intuited: 'If there is a God, man cannot but be immortal because God is faithful to his love.’ The psalmists understood this well.
Psalm 16, where the pray-er turns to his God, with whom he has established a lifelong love relationship, he says to God: 'Now I am old, I know that I am waiting for Sheol, but there is a problem; we are both in love, and lovers can no longer do without each other. I cannot do without you, but you cannot do without me.' What will happen? The conclusion of Psalm 16: “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor let your devout one see the pit.” But this translation is incorrect; they translate as 'devout,’ but the Hebrew text reads, 'you cannot let your hasid hesed,' let your lover, your beloved, see the pit.
What will happen? 'I don't know, but I know that you are faithful to love, and then you will show me the way of life, “you will show me the path to life, abounding joy in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever.” This means to have understood the self-presentation of God as the God who raises not the dead but gives immortal life to the living.
If there is a God who loves man, man is immortal. God cannot allow death to overcome. Jesus says that God is the God of the living, and because of the life that God gives them, they will no longer die. So, the God of Jesus is not the God who raises the dead, who brings them back to their former life; he is the God who resurrects the living, that is, who gives his own life to the living, and this life cannot be touched by biological death.
This gift of his life is what today we call 'resurrection.’ To resurrect means to welcome this gift that God gives us of his own life, immortal life.
I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.
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