Scripture:
Revelation 11:4-12
Luke 20:27-40
Reflection:
In our Gospel reading for today, the Sadducees, who don’t believe in the Resurrection, take their turn in trying to stump Jesus. They offer him a hypothetical situation in which a woman winds up marrying seven brothers because she has been widowed seven times without bearing children. They ask Jesus, “Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?” They think they’ve got Him. But Jesus responds that in the afterlife, things will not be as they are here on earth: “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.” And then Jesus offers another proof for belief in resurrection: “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.”
Our belief in the Resurrection reminds us that our God is always oriented towards life and wants us to be oriented the same way. As Jesus says, all are alive to God. All are precious to God. All are beloved by God, even those who reject God.
The challenge for us is to look at the choices we make, about what we say, about what we do, about how we relate to others and to all of creation and determine whether they support life or death. May all our choices lead us to support life, as God supports us.
Fr. Phil Paxton, C.P., is the local superior of the Passionist Community in Birmingham, Alabama.