32nd Sunday Ordinary Time

Posted on November 5, 2013

Gospel Reflection for the 32nd Sunday Ordinary Time Year C – November 10th 2013

Full scripture for this Sunday is available on the Catholic Ireland website. Daily Scripture is also available. Our parish Prayers of the Faithful for this Sunday are made available on the Dublin Diocesan website.

---

SCRIPTURE

Some Sadducees-those who say that there is no resurrection-approached him and they put this question to him, ‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man’s married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were seven brothers. The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died. Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?’

Jesus replied, ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and if’ the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.’

Luke 20: 27-38

---

REFLECTION

Big question of what it will all be like? Jesus gives no details. We live in hope and die in hope. We are to be alive forever in the love of God. God keeps love safe. When life ceases love stays.

God is God of life, the Gospel  says; “to him all are alive,” even the dead.

A New Breakthrough
God breaks into life in a new way at our death. It happens in small ways every time we are transformed a bit – when we forgive, make peace, really help another, when we promise ourselves to someone or something, …this is an effect of the resurrection. But the final one is a gift unlike any earthly gift.

Letting Go
We need to share this hope with each other. The peace you may have felt at the death of someone, the dream where the loved one was happy, the thanks you feel for another for ever… all of this brings hope even when their death is sudden or self inflicted or at a young age. As we place our candle at the altar for our loved ones in November, we are letting them go of into what death really is – our finding our way to the arms of God.

Words of Pope Francis – “Hope is not looking at a half-full glass, which is simply optimism, which is a human attitude that depends on many things. Hope is a gift of Jesus, of His very self, His very name is hope. It is Christ in you, the hope for glory.”

This is the eternal hope which is the root of our joy even in the losses of our lives.

Donal Neary SJ