God is God, not of the dead, but of the living.
There will be a new tomorrow
There will be a brighter day
There will be a new tomorrow
Love will find a way.
These lines are from a song the English pop singer, Jackie DeShannon was singing over the airwaves several years ago. Actually, it was part of a trend in popular music of that time in which young people began to express their real concern for the future. Would there be a new tomorrow, a new chance, a new opportunity that lay ahead for them? Will love find a way for them, they wondered?
One of the truths Jesus teaches us is that God’s Love does find a way. “God is love” we read in the Gospel of John, and God’s Love is eternal and all-powerful. There is nothing we have done which prevents God from loving us and from giving us a new and bright tomorrow. There is no mistake we have made, there is no wrong decision we have taken, there is no sin of any kind which can defeat God’s Love for us, God’s willingness to forgive us. We should not dwell in the past, or brood about past wrongs, but live in the present, realizing that God is with us in the present, at this very moment, to show us the way forward to new life, to a new tomorrow. We must trust in Him and be ready to follow wherever He wants to leads us. There may be times when we find ourselves in deep trouble, times when we see no any way out of it. Even then, God knows all things and never stops loving us as His beloved ones chosen by Him. When we turn to Him in prayer, His Love finds a way to turn our darkness into light, our night into day, our sorrow into joy. God will never abandon us or give up on us. He is with us even in our times of trial, turmoil and stress, and He assures us that when we turn to Him in prayer He will provide solutions for us. We live in tumultuous times, in a world where we are uncertain of the future. We wonder when will the war in Iraq or Afghanistan end? When will there be true and lasting peace among nations? Will there be a nuclear war in our lifetime? Will global warming drastically change our lives? There are many questions like these we ask ourselves, but above and before all else, we need to remember that God is love and that His love will conquer even what seems for us to be unconquerable. We need to meditate on the crucifix and see there how Jesus triumphed over all the sufferings He endured, how by the Cross He defeated death as He rose from the dead three days later. See how on the Cross Jesus won eternal life, not just for Himself, but for us all who are His disciples, who wish to serve Him as Lord, and who trust in Him. His rising from the dead on Easter was and is the final victory over death, so that Paul could write: “Death where is your victory, death where is your sting.” We live now the new life Jesus won for us by His death and resurrection, and so we see that truly Love does find a way, that there is a tomorrow, even for those who die, who leave this life behind. The truth Jesus teaches us in today’s Gospel passage is that “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all of them are alive.”
In the time of Jesus, the Sadducees were members of an ultra-conservative religious party who accepted as authoritative only those things written down in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, which contain the Law of Moses. Because of their outlook they rejected many of the teachings of Jesus, and among them, His teaching on the resurrection of the body after we die. For the Sadducees the dwelling place of those who died was called “Sheol” and it was a nether-world deeply imbedded in the earth where the soul lived a shadowy sort of life. “Sheol” is described as “a land of darkness with death’s shadow over all.” (Eccl. 9:10) The Sadducees wanted to make Jesus look foolish before His followers and so they challenged Jesus’ teaching about resurrection by putting to Him a rather bizarre and hypothetical case, as we saw in today’s Gospel passage. They said that according to Moses, “if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.” According to their improbable case, there were seven brothers and each one married their brother’s widow and each one died childless. The Sadducees asked Jesus when the woman died whose wife will she be, she had lawfully married each of the seven brothers. Their question is like asking: “After the resurrection from the dead will their be chocolate ice cream in heaven, or will we be able to play golf there? Jesus rejected this attempt by the Sadducees to put earthly limitations on eternal life. As humans, we know what is here on earth; but we can know about what happens in heaven only through faith, not experience. We cannot just transfer our experiences here on earth to those of heaven, because they are two very different things on two very different levels. Our lives on earth are finite and material, whereas our lives in heaven will be infinite and spiritual until the final resurrection of the body, when even our bodies will share in the happiness God has waiting for us with Him in heaven. So, Jesus answers the Sadducee’s question by saying that “those who belong to this age marry ..... but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry or are given in marriage. They cannot die any more because are like angels and are children of God being children of the resurrection” meaning that our afterlife is as different from life on this earth as our life on this earth is different from that of the angels in heaven. Yes, we will be re-united with our loved ones in heaven and rejoice in their company, but Jesus emphasizes that our relationship with God as His chosen sons and daughters is what is most important for us both in this life and in heaven, and He assures us in today’s Gospel passage that: “God is God not of the dead, but of the living,” and so even if we die, we shall live just as the grain of wheat dies when it is planted in the earth, but produces new life in the plant and in the flower it produces.
In a book called “The Magic of Three Days” the author gives us a simple, but beautiful reflection on the power of Jesus’ Resurrection, on the power of God’s Love giving us new life. It reads as follows: “It was a beautiful spring Monday morning and a sense of peace stayed with me as I left the Cathedral where I had stopped to pray. I paused for a moment on top of the steps leading to the Avenue now crowded with people rushing to their jobs. Sitting in her usual place inside a small archway was the old flower lady. The flower lady was smiling, her wrinkled old face alive with some inner-joy. I started down the steps. Then, on an impulse, I turned and picked up a flower. As I put the flower in my lapel I said: “You look happy this morning.” She replied: “Why not? Everything is good.” The flower lady was dressed so shabbily and she seemed so very old that her reply startled me. “You’ve been sitting here for many years now,” I said, “and you’re always smiling. You wear your trouble well.” “Well, you can’t reach my age and not have troubles,” she said, “only it’s like Jesus and Good Friday. You see, when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday, that was the worst day for the world. And when I get troubles I remember that, and then I think of what happened only three days later; Easter Sunday, and Our Lord rising from the dead. So, when I get troubles, I’ve learned to wait three days, and somehow, everything gets all right again.” Then the flower lady smiled good-bye, and her words still follow me whenever I think I have troubles. Give God a chance. Wait three days.”
The inner-joy which the flower lady in that story felt resulted from her faith in the Resurrected Jesus and His Power to transform despair into hope, sorrow into joy, and death into life. God Who is Love loves us and His Love will find a way to help us.
A little boy told his mother that he didn’t want to go to Sunday school because they were going to learn all about heaven. “But wouldn’t you like to know all about heaven?” his mother asked. The little boy replied: “No, mommy, because I want heaven to be a surprise.”
Perhaps God also wants heaven to be a surprise for us. That is what St. Paul once wrote to the early Christians living in Corinth. He wrote that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1 Cor. 2:6,9)
During this month of November we pray for the repose of the souls of our loved ones who have died and gone before us marked with the sign of faith. On this Remembrance Day we also remember the sacrifice of countless men and women who gave their lives in battle in World War 1, World War 2, the Korean War, and in the present war in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. They gave their lives so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have in this beautiful and richly blessed country. Let us pray for them during this Mass. May they rest in peace with God Who is Love, with God Who is “God, not of the dead, but of the living for to Him all of them are alive.”