Gospel Lectio Divina for Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time - November 6, 2022
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,
came forward.
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 out '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."
MEDITATE
The children of this age marry and remarry; 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.
My initial thought is that he is talking about religious people; priests, religious sisters and brothers, and those who choose a life of celibacy. But that would mean that those who do marry would not be resurrected after they die. I think Jesus is calling us to become a new creation, to be born of the coming age. We may marry in this age to help guide us along the path, but in the coming age we will be so close to God that we will not need a spouse. The connection between marriage, death, and life then makes a little more sense. Marriage and our bodies are necessary in this age to help connect us with God. We need physical connections in the real world in order to sustain our faith. We need relationships, sacraments, sacramentals. In the coming age, we will not need these things because we will be in the very presence of God and his presence will fulfill those needs.
But that begs the question, will we ever again have bodies in the coming age? Jesus answers that as well, implying that our bodies will be resurrected at the resurrection of the dead. But why would we need them anymore? In this life, our bodies drag us down more than anything. They get fatigued, ill, they can be injured, they age. Why bother even having them in the coming age?
Well, we also experience many pleasures through them. Will our bodies in the coming age be nothing more than conduits of pleasure, then? If we will already be in the presence of God, and the main purpose of our bodies is to connect with God through his creation here on earth, why will we need them?
Because God’s original plan for us was to be body and spirit. We are not angels, who are pure spirit. God has existed as three persons for all of eternity. The Second Person of the Trinity is the Word, God Incarnate, Jesus Christ. God created us to manifest the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Second Person of the Trinity–not because Christ cannot do it himself, but because he wanted to diffuse his love throughout all of his creation in a unique way. We are his Body. Upon establishing the Church, we became the Second Person of the Trinity in this world. We will have bodies in the coming age so he can continue to spread his love throughout his creation, but in an even more perfect way in the new heaven and the new earth.
he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive
In this month of November, the Church advises us to think of death. So, these words are encouraging because they remind us that death is not the end. Our bodies are just a superficial representation of our true selves. Yes, we are our bodies while we live in them. Therefore, we ought to treat them with dignity, and treat the bodies of other people with dignity. But if we were just our bodies, we wouldn’t have much to look forward to. Our bodies die. Everybody will end up as a corpse or ashes. So even though we are our bodies, we also are not just our bodies.
Our bodies are like an avatar in a video game. Or, more appropriately, an avatar in a video game is like our bodies on earth. If you’re a gamer, or know a gamer, you know that gamers will refer to their avatar in the game as themselves. They’ll say things like, “Let me just finish this level. I just have to defeat this boss.” If you’re watching them play, you may tell them, “You have to go through that building and up the ladder to find the way out. Then you’ll reach the next level.” It’s not really them, but the players refer to their avatar as if it were them. Some people even suggest that we are just living in a video game, and when we die we just lose the game and subsequently wake up in the 24th century–realizing that our whole life was just an extremely realistic virtual simulation. I won’t go that far, but you may be surprised to find out how popular that theory is becoming. In the absence of the true and correct view of the afterlife, people can come up with some crazy theories. Nonetheless, as an analogy, this works: The spiritual world is to the real world as the real world is to a virtual world.
Going back to what Jesus said, I notice there’s a great deal packed into his words, as usual. He is not God of the dead. Keep in mind, the ancients did have a “god of the dead”; it was Hades for the Greeks and Pluto for the Romans. Jesus spoke about death quite a bit. He foreshadowed his own death throughout his ministry. He said his disciples must die to themselves in order to follow him. He spoke a great deal about the afterlife, and for many people the afterlife was in direct correlation to death. But he also preached about eternal life, and said those who follow him will inherit it. We know Christ’s teachings from ages of tradition and saints. To us, his message of eternal life beyond death seems obvious. Of course God is not the God of the dead. But the first followers of Christ may have benefited from Christ’s clarification that he is the God of the living, not the dead. By talking about the afterlife, and saying God is the God of the living–not the dead–Jesus is pointing out that true life is on the other side of death. Indeed, we are living in the world of the dying and the next is the land of the living.
for to him all are alive
Despite the fact that the Church is advising us to think about death this time of year, this Sunday the Church leaves us with a word of hope. All are alive. We should think about our death because that’s the best way to access heaven–after all, we have to experience death to get there. Yes, they say the saints experienced heaven on earth, but not in its fullness. And they still had to at least die to themselves in this life to experience heaven on earth. The saints, whom we celebrated this week, paved the way and showed what we can all experience in not only the coming age, but in this age as well–where and when we can get a little taste of heaven.
PRAY
Lord,
You are the God of the living. Help me to not fear death. Help me to see it as the passageway to eternal life. At my death, a variety of choices will be set before me. My greatest temptations will be within my reach. Please, in Jesus’ name, give me the faith and strength to choose you now and at the moment of my death. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for me–a sinner–now and at the hour of death. Amen.
LISTEN
The teachings of Christ are real stingers. He does not shy away from talking about the very thing that most of us fear the most. But he only talks about death to lead us to true life–which exists beyond death. How can we listen for the truth of this teaching when we read the rest of the Bible, when we experience life, and when we interact with others? We can look for a sign of hope in every dire situation. The Bible, with all of its stories of turmoil, trial, loss, and defeat, always gives us the hope of something better and life-giving beyond what the characters endure. We can take that truth into our own lives and notice that, no matter how dark things get, it is not the end. There is always something better waiting just beyond the hardest parts. That is the hope Christ gives us by saying he is the God of the living, not the dead, and by leading us to the eternal life that comes after death.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
David Kilby is a freelance writer from New Jersey. He received his undergrad degree in humanities and Catholic culture from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. In addition to working with the Knights of the Holy Eucharist (knights.org), he has served as a journalist for Princeton Packet Publications, and the Trenton Monitor, the magazine for the Diocese of Trenton. Some of his published work can also be found in St. Anthony Messenger, Catholic Herald (UK), and Catholic World Report. For the latter he is managing editor. Find more of his writing at ramblingspirit.com.