Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil
November 9, 2019
To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below:
The following text guided the homily:
- This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.
- Jesus will speak to us about the reality of heaven. His affirmation happens in conversation with a group called the Saduccees, who were mainly members of the high priestly elites, who didn’t believe in the Resurrection. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers — and thought that there was no reference there at all to resurrection from the dead. So to try to test Jesus they brought to him the invented example of a woman who married successively seven different brothers after each previous brother had died. If she had become one flesh with seven different men until death did they part, they asked, then with whom would she be on flesh at the resurrection, if they were now all alive? Because she couldn’t be, they supposed, one flesh with all of them, there couldn’t be a resurrection.
- Jesus’ answer highlighted things.
- First, he said that it’s only the children of this age who marry and remarry. In heaven, he states, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage because there will only be one wedding, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church. The institution and sacrament of marriage, Jesus implies is a reality for this world. The reason for this is pretty clear: Marriage has a two-fold purpose, LOVE and LIFE, or, in more traditional terminology, the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. In heaven, there’s no purpose to marriage because men and women no longer need to be sanctified since they’re already saints; and there will be no new children because saints aren’t having babies in the afterlife! But while there will be no marriage and conjugal sexual activity in heaven, there will certainly be love! Marriage in this world is meant to prepare spouses and children to enter into that love, the perfect love of God and the love of the communion of saints. And marriage is particularly well-suited to achieve this purpose.
- The second thing he says is that, contrary to Sadducees’ idea, the Pentateuch does speak about marriage. Jesus says that God revealed this when he spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and called himself the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” He’s the God not of the dead but of the living,” and hence Abraham, Isaac and Jacob couldn’t be truly dead. Eternal life, therefore, is real.
- November is the time in which the Church always has us focus on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell. At the beginning of the month, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, in which we remember and ask the intercession of all those who have arrived at the place to which we aspire. The next day we mark All Souls’ Day, and remember and pray for all the dead, especially those who are in need of our prayers and sacrifices to enter into paradise. And throughout the month, the Church keeps the four last things in front of us. First, the fact that each of us will die, some of us by surprise, much earlier than we think. Second, as soon as we die, we will be judged. Jesus gives us the criteria of that final exam of life, but we need to be ready for it, by a life of Christian faith, hope and love. He’ll separate us on the basis of our deeds, whether we’ve known and loved God and whether we’ve cared for him in our needy neighbors. Some of us will go to heaven, whether directly or through the purification of purgatory, and others will go to a place of definitive self-alienation from God. These are realities that Jesus affirms throughout the Gospel.
- What should we be doing now?
- The first thing is developing a personal, truly vital, relationship with God. The God of the universe is not the deity of a cemetery of dead bodies, but rather “the God of the living.” And not just the living “in general”: He is the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” and he’s meant to be the God of Roger, Grazie, Andrea, Ashley, and fill in your own name. The resurrection is not so much an event as a relationship with Jesus who says, “I AM the Resurrection and the Life” (Jn 11:25). Jesus declared during the Last Supper, “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn 17:3). Eternity begins when we enter into the deep intimate friendship with God, where we join our life to his, because once he’s truly living in us, we are beginning to live forever since his life is eternal.
- The second thing is taking advantage of the means God gives us to enter into that relations. The sacrament, like marriage, but also especially baptism, confession, the Holy Eucharist, are meant to help us enter in that vital relationship. He comes to abide in us and we abide in him. If we keep the communion with God who is eternal then death will be nothing other than a change of address.
- Third, we need to live with our end in mind and make choices for eternity. St. Paul in Sunday’s second reading, prays for the Christians in Thessalonika and for us, that God will “guard you from the evil one” and “direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.” The evil one, the devil, is trying to sabotage our life, get us to direct our hearts not to God’s love but to this world, and make us throw in the towel on living for eternity. We need to be aware of it. In today’s first reading, we see a great example of perseverance, of faith in God and in the power of the resurrection, in the mother and her seven valiant sons from the Second Book of Maccabees, who refused to offend God even should they all have to die. This is the faith of the martyrs, who knew that if they remained faithful to Christ, they would experience after their death what he did after his: the triumph of the resurrection. But if we’re not thinking about eternity, many of us will sell out the Lord for less than 30 pieces of silver, even less than a mouthful of pork. The Church is like the mother in the story, spurring her children on to fight the good fight, to finish the race and to keep the faith, just like Mary at the Foot of the Cross helped strengthen her Son to cross to the finish line of his saving work. The Church is meant to be a school that prepares us to be martyrs, whether or not we actually have to shed our blood. It tries to nourish our faith to the point that we would remain true to God to the point of giving our life for him who gave his for us. The Church doesn’t exist to make spiritual wimps but to fill us with heroic virtue. If we don’t do that, we fail. As we celebrate Veteran’s Day tomorrow and remember so many generations of audacious soldiers who were willing to sacrifice their life for their country, for their loved ones, for innocent people abroad, we remember their courage, their training, their heroism and recognize that we can be similarly courageous soldiers for Christ until the end, knowing that what he promises is something far greater than a Purple Heart and the Medal of Honor.
- Jesus is the God of the living. And he wants us to enter into a consequential conversation not of words but of lives with him, so that we might experience the eternal joy of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the mother and her seven sons, St. Paul and all the saints.
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