The God of the Living’s Call, ‘Come Up Here,’ 33rd Saturday (II), November 21, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
November 21, 2020
Rev 11:4-12, Ps 144, Lk 20:27-40

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today’s readings focus us — as the Church normally throughout the month of November — on eternity and specifically on heaven and how we’re supposed to prepare for it in our conceptions and in our actions. So often our conceptions of heaven are erroneous projections of the little things of earthly life. Jesus, in today’s Gospel, helps us to grasp that heaven is something far greater. St. Paul has told us, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered the human heart [to conceive] what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9) and St. John has added, “What we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Today Jesus helps us to see that heaven is even greater than one of the greatest gifts on earth and that that earthly gift is meant to prepare us for a much greater realization. And then he, the Book of Revelation, Our Lady and those praying for us in monasteries across the world show us how to live with that reality in mind.
• The Sadducees came to Jesus with a question designed to test him and prove their point that there is no resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy and they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, which they claimed gave no evidence whatsoever of the resurrection. They were often in dispute with the Scribes and the Pharisees, who accepted the entire Hebrew Bible, which gives ample prophecy of the resurrection. We see evidence of this dispute in the detail that after Jesus’ response it was the Scribes who said, “Teacher, you have answered well,” since the Scribes were regularly arguing with the Sadducees about this very point. The Sadducees pose to Jesus a question based on the truth of marriage and one aspect of the Mosaic law. We know that in the beginning, God said that when a man leaves his mother and father and clings to his wife, they become one flesh, and no man can render their bond asunder (Gen 2:24). The Jews also practiced what is called the levirate law of marriage. Moses taught, “When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family; but her husband’s brother shall go to her and perform the duty of a brother-in-law by marrying her. The first-born son she bears shall continue the line of the deceased brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel” (Deut 25:5-6). The first son born from the woman would technically become the heir of the deceased brother in order to carry on his name through successive generations of progeny. The Sadducees’ question about the seven brothers who married the same seemingly sterile woman was essentially this: if this woman became one flesh with seven different men, to whom will she be united in one flesh forever? The implication was that since she couldn’t be one flesh with all seven, there could be no eternal life, because it would make the one flesh bond of marriage absurd. People must really be dead — and dead for real — for a new bond to be formed.
• How does Jesus respond? He responds first about the connection between marriage and the afterlife, describing how marriage is an institution God founded for this world meant to help people enter into a far greater marriage bond, the marriage of the Lamb with his Bride the Church that will be consummated forever in the wedding feast of heaven. He said, “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.” There are no more marriages taking place in heaven. The reason for this is because marriage, as God intended, is sacramental. It’s meant to be a bridge to eternity. There’s a two-fold purpose to the Sacrament of Marriage, what has traditionally been called “the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring,” and both aspects of that purpose will have already been fulfilled in heaven. There’s no need for the sanctification of spouses because, hopefully, both spouses will be saints around God’s throne; and there will be no new offspring in heaven, there will be no need for maternity wards and schools because everyone will be full stature in Christ. Marriage is meant to be a bridge to eternity, an entrance in this world and in the next into Christ’s marriage with us. To say that there is no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven doesn’t mean that there will not be love in heaven — there certainly will! — and it doesn’t mean that those who were spouses here on earth won’t have an even deeper spiritual bond in Christ than they even anticipated here on earth, but that the essential properties of marital love between one man and one woman will no longer be in vigor. In this month of November, those who are married are called to reflect again on the fundamental purpose of the Sacrament of Marriage, which is to help each other form a school of sanctification leading spouses and children, God-willing, to the unending nuptial of the Lamb and the Bride. And those who exist in a spiritual sponsality meant to evince the marriage between the Bridegroom and the Bride are called to ponder their marriage as a school of sanctification all the more.
• After Jesus clarifies the misunderstanding of the Sadducees about marriage and its connection to eternity, he gets to the heart of their problem, which is about eternal life. In St. Matthew’s version of the account, he tells them, “You are misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Mt 22:29). They don’t even understand the five books of Sacred Scripture they do accept, he says, nor what God’s power is to raise the dead. He cites an example from the Pentateuch that up until this time had never been used to refute the Sadducees’ objection. “That the dead will rise,” Jesus says, “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 is a reference to the famous scene in the second book of the Hebrew Bible, Exodus, wherein God appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and revealed himself as YHWH (“I am who am”) and as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ex 3:1-15). The fact that God said, “I am,” rather than “I was,” the God of their forefathers is a strong indication that they are in fact alive. Not only did Jesus’ response win the acclaim of the Scribes but was so powerful that St. Luke tells us that the Sadducees “no longer dared to ask him anything.”
• The first reading from the Book of Revelation adds to the teaching the Church gives us today on eternal life and the connection between this world and heaven. The more we understand the symbolism being employed by St. John the more we can apply its lessons to our lives. St. John heard a voice saying, “Here are my two witnesses. These are the two olive trees and two lamp stands that stand before the Lord of the earth.” Why refer to a witness as an olive tree or a lamp stand? A lamp stand, we know, gives off light and an olive tree produces olive oil used for anointing. Therefore the witness that is being given is of the light of God and the sacred anointing of the Lord, pointing to the Anointed one (Messiah in Hebrew, Christ in Greek) and to those who are anointed in him. The word witness used by St. John, of course, is the Greek word martyr, which points to the supreme testimony. The symbolism of the Book of Revelation goes on to describe that they’re both intrepid witnesses — with fire coming out of their mouths, a sign of how they speak with God’s power — and that “they have the power to close up the sky so that no rain can fall during the time of their prophesying. They also have power to turn water into blood and to afflict the earth with any plague as often as they wish.” These are clear allusions to Elijah who prophesied the great drought to King Ahab (1 Kings 17) and to Moses who for God announced the plagues to Pharaoh including the one that turned the Nile into Blood (Exod 7:14-18). These were the two who were set to give witness to the coming of the Messiah, Elijah whom the Prophet Malachi said would precede the Messiah and make straight his ways (Mal 3:1; Mal 4:5), a function fulfilled by St. John the Baptist who came in the spirit of Elijah (Lk 1:17; Mt 17:12); and Moses, on whom the Messiah would pattern his life (Deut 18:18). There’s no surprise that in the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John saw Jesus speaking to Moses and Elijah about the “exodus” he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Moses and Elijah were two of the Lord’s great anointed ones. They were both great lamp stands. They were the ones giving witness to Jesus. But the text says that there were two lamp stands and two olive trees? Why two instead of one? It could be that John the Baptist is with Elijah and Christ with Moses. It could be referring to their guardian angels, who were always present. Or it could refer to us with them, since all of us are called to give a similar witness of light and anointing. The Book of Revelation continues that when they have finished their testimony (literally, their martyrion or martyrdom), they will be killed by the “beast” from the abyss, a symbol of the devil, and that their death will for three and a half days become a mockery in the great city symbolically called “Sodom” and “Egypt,” where “indeed their Lord was crucified.” We know that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem, instead of being a holy city, had become a city of sin (Sodom) and slavery (Egypt). People would mock them and their deaths because “these two prophets tormented the inhabitants of the earth,” who didn’t want to walk in the light they were emanating or to live anointed lives but only greasy ones. These words of Revelation were fulfilled in the martyrdoms of so many prophets who took their lead from Moses and Elijah, prophets both before and after the time of Christ and his crucifixion. Revelation says, “After three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them.” This is an allusion to Christ’s resurrection on the third day. “They heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, ‘Come up here.’ So they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies looked on.” We know that Elijah was caught up to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:11) and we’ve never been able to find Moses’ body on Mt. Nebo. Certainly their souls are now with God experiencing the triumph of the resurrection. This whole passage helps us to learn how to live in this world so that one day we may experience with Moses and Elijah the triumph of our Crucified Lord. They lived as lamp stands and as olive trees. We, too, are called to burn with Christ’s light as the light of the world and we are to live in an anointed way, to live according to the Holy Spirit whose anointing we’ve received, to live by the Sacraments, to live as priest, prophet and king — the three who would be anointed in the Old Testament — in Christ, the Anointed Priest, Prophet and King. That is our great martyrdom, our testimony of the Lord. The beast may come from the abyss to wage war against us, to try to conquer and kill us. Our cities may become like Sodom and Egypt. Our corpses may lie in the city streets and our enemies may for a time seek to gloat over us. But this passage from the Book of Revelation is meant to strengthen us to live our faith with heroism. In the Psalm today, we blessed the Lord as our “Rock,” saying that he trains our “hands for battle” and our “fingers for war.” We named him our “fortress,” our “stronghold,” our “deliver,” our trusted “shield.” All of these remain true even when we’re persecuted, when when we’re surrounded by the beast and those who have made themselves our enemies. Those circumstances are the occasions in which our witness as a lamp stand and an olive tree radiate all the more.
• One of the ways in which we are called to give off Christ’s light and his sacred unction is through our living apostolic celibacy chastely for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. We’re called to illuminate the world with the love that will last forever, anointed, specially blessed, by the Lord with the capacity to be eschatological signs of that place that the human heart has not yet imagined in its depth, where there is no marrying or giving in marriage because all the saved will participate as the Bride in the wedding feast of the Lamb. Because of this, our chaste celibacy is a gift for the world, helping others to remember and see the beauty of the love of eternity, a beauty that exceeds even the beautiful gift of the Sacrament of Marriage. The one who gives this eschatological witness the best is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who lived the nuptial meaning of her existence to the full as she consecrated herself entirely to God’s plan together with St. Joseph. She and St. Joseph both, in their earthly life, point to the eternal wedding banquet and show us how to live joyfully, as a lamp stand and olive tree, in a spousal way the anticipation that all the saved will experience eternally. Today we celebrate the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s presentation. Most of the liturgical elements for today’s feast come from the Pseudogospel of St. James (and even later pseudogospels like the Pseudoevangelium of Matthew and the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary) that attest that Mary was presented as a young girl of three into the Temple in Jerusalem where she was raised until the time she was betrothed to Joseph. We read in the Pseudogospel of St. James, written about 200 years after the events and so historically useless according to the details but useful in terms of the traditions based upon it later, “And the child became three years old, and Joachim said: ‘Call for the daughters of the Hebrews that are undefiled, and let them take every one a lamp, and let them be burning, that the child turn not backward and her heart be taken captive away from the temple of the Lord.’ And they did so until they were gone up into the temple of the Lord. And the priest received her and kissed her and blessed her and said: ‘The Lord has magnified your name among all generations: in you in the latter days shall the Lord make manifest his redemption unto the children of Israel.’ And he made her to sit upon the third step of the altar. And the Lord put grace upon her and she danced with her feet and all the house of Israel loved her. And her parents sat down marveling, and praising the Lord God because the child was not turned away backward. And Mary was in the temple of the Lord as a dove that is nurtured: and she received food from the hand of an angel. And when she was twelve years old, there was a council of the priests, saying: ‘Behold Mary is become twelve years old in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her?’ … And lo, an angel of the Lord appeared saying unto [the high priest]:’ Zacharias, Zacharias~ go forth and assemble them that are widowers of the people, and let them bring every man a rod, and to whomsoever the Lord shall show a sign, his wife shall she be.’ …
• Mary was presented in the temple and it was there that she, who had been immaculately conceived, was transformed and  prepared by God the Father to become the temple, the tabernacle, of his incarnate Son. That points us to the significance of this feast for us. When we are presented in the Temple at baptism, God brings about a transformation so that his Son, Christ the King, may reign within us by uniting us to his own consecration. And whenever we present ourselves to the Lord — as we do every time we come into this chapel, every time we come to Mass — the Lord wants to transform us to make ourselves his holy sanctuary, the place where he reigns, is welcomed, adored, and from which he continues his mission of the salvation of the human race and the bringing of others into his kingdom. For this to occur, we need to go beyond the physical act of presentation but seek to have similar sentiments to those of Mary.
• The feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is also Pro Orantibus Day, the annual observance begun by Pope Pius XII in 1953 and expanded by St. John Paul II in 1997, on which the whole Church prays in a special way “For Those Praying,” for all of those in convents, cloisters, monasteries and hermitages who intercede for us without ceasing before God. It’s held on the feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the model of total dedication to a life of prayer and intercession in God’s service. It’s a day on which we thank God for the contemplatives’ silent, hidden, generous and beautiful vocation. It’s an occasion on which we recognize them, thank them, encourage them and commit to give the material support they need. It’s a day on which we ponder their example of consecration and of following Christ the King and reigning with him through prayer.  Contemplative life is a great and indispensable gift of God and a preparation for that life to which marriage and all the sacraments point. All of us benefit spiritually from the orantes‘ prayers and sacrifices, even if many of us are unaware of their intercession or naively think that their hidden life is being wasted. They remind us — ensnared by the frenetic, noisy and provisional — that God is truly the “pearl of great price” and the “one thing necessary.” In a world that seeks to structure itself without God, their very existence helps us to recall that God is real, provident, and worth our all. They teach us how to adore God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Today, as every day, communities of contemplatives are before God constantly praying for us, that we might live as lamp stands and olive trees, that we may give true witness of Christ in the world. Today we pray for them, thank them and thank God for them. We’ll never know until heaven how many of the graces we’ve received — and disasters we’ve averted — have taken place on account of their incessant prayers.
• And so today, on the feast of Mary’s Presentation, on Pro Orantibus Day, on the vigil of the Solemnity of Christ the King, we present ourselves before God who humbly hides himself under the appearance of bread and wine, asking him who is the Bridegroom to transform us and unite ourselves in love to him, in response to the prayers of the Blessed Mother, all the saints and all of the contemplatives here on earth, so that with them we might respond to his summons to “come up here” to the wedding banquet of the eternal kingdom where, together with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints, and experience the joy of the eternal nuptial banquet in the heavenly monastery where our prayer, worship and celebration will know no end.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel lk 20:27-40

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,
came forward and put this question to Jesus, 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;
the 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 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.
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.”
Some of the scribes said in reply,
“Teacher, you have answered well.”
And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

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