32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14; Psalm 16:1,5-6,8,15; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38
Picture: cc Mohd Azli Abdul Malek
My dear friends, if you were to get into a car that I happen to be driving, and I promise to take you wherever you want to go, do you know how to tell whether or not I’m keeping my promise? Of course you do, right? How will you do it? By simply observing the direction in which I’m going. By paying attention to the landmarks and the street signs we pass along the way. So, for example, if I agree to take you to the airport, but you notice that I’m heading west instead of east, and the signs tell you we’re on the way to Tuas instead of to Changi, then you probably have good reason to be suspicious.
In other words, we can tell the destination someone intends to reach, not just by accepting what the person has to say, but also by considering the direction in which that person chooses to travel. By paying attention to the signs along the way. This, I believe, is also what we find in our Mass readings today.
In the gospel, a group of Sadducees pick a fight with Jesus about the resurrection from the dead. As you know, Jesus and many of the Jews of his day, firmly believed in the resurrection. But the Sadducees did not. And it’s important for us to realise that this is not just a difference in some abstract incidental belief. Rather, it is a fundamental disagreement over humanity’s final destination. One side aims to go no further than the boundaries of this world. The other hopes to reach far beyond.
To their credit, the Sadducees made no attempt to hide their disbelief. They professed it openly. As they do in the gospel. And we know that the wealthy and worldly Sadducees testified to their disbelief not just by the things they said, but also by the materialistic direction in which they chose to steer their daily lives. As we see in the scornful argument they use against Jesus in the gospel, the Sadducees’ minds and hearts were filled only with worldly perspectives and temporal concerns.
So that if we were to imagine, just for a moment, that the Sadducees were placed in the same position as that heroic mother and her seven sons in the first reading, it’s difficult for us to imagine them reacting in the same way, right? Forced to choose between apostasy on the one hand, and torture and death on the other, we may be forgiven for expecting the Sadducees to quickly choose apostasy. After all, without the hope in the resurrection to sustain them, from where will they draw the strength they need to suffer and to die?
In contrast, the mother and her seven sons demonstrate their belief in the resurrection, not just by what they say, but especially by how they choose to live, and how they choose to die. Their heroic sacrifice is an eloquent sign of the firmness of their faith, of the stability of their hope in God’s promise of new life. So that those moving words from the responsorial psalm can quite easily be placed on each of their lips: I kept my feet firmly in your paths; there was no faltering in my steps…. As for me, in my justice I shall see your face and be filled, when I awake, with the sight of your glory.
Again, my dear friends, we discern someone’s intended destination, not just by accepting whatever that person happens to say, but also by considering the direction in which that person chooses to travel. By reading the road signs in that person’s life. If this is true of the people in our readings, then what about us? What about me? I who, at Mass every Sunday, together with the whole congregation, publicly profess that I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. To what extent does the reality of my life actually match this faith that I so regularly profess?
When I consider the direction in which I choose to steer my life everyday, what do I find? What are the things I typically allow to occupy my mind and heart? How do I decide where to channel the energies and resources at my disposal? What perspectives and concerns do I consider? What do I worry about? What keeps me up at night? And, perhaps most significantly, how do I react when I encounter those difficulties and trials that, from time to time, life inevitably places in my path? How do I handle those often subtle temptations to compromise my beliefs, to give in to the materialistic and self-centred demands of the world, at the expense of my Christian faith?
In other words, when I honestly consider all the road signs in my own life’s journey, what do they tell me about the destination towards which I am actually heading? How firmly do I believe in the resurrection? Of course, I must acknowledge that, unlike the angels, I am made of flesh and blood. I live in the material world. But still, to what extent do I allow my decisions in time to be informed by the vast yet consoling horizon of eternity?
And what if all the signs in my life indicate, perhaps to my great surprise, that my chosen path is closer to that of the Sadducees than that of the mother and her seven sons? What then? Is there a way for me to change course, if I want to? From where do I find the courage and strength to do that? We find a helpful answer to these questions in the second reading which, as you’ve probably already noticed, begins and ends with sentences starting with the word may. May our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father… comfort you and strengthen you in everything good that you do or say.… May the Lord turn your hearts towards the love of God and the fortitude of Christ.
In other words, the reading begins and ends with words of prayer offered for those to whom the reading is addressed. Not only prayer for comfort and strength, but also prayer that their hearts might be pointed in the right direction. What’s more, in between these words of prayer, we find, at the heart of the reading, a heartfelt appeal for more prayers to be offered, this time for the author and his collaborators. Pray for us; pray that the Lord’s message may spread quickly… pray that we may be preserved from the interference of… evil people.
What does this tell us, my dear friends, if not that the road to eternal life is paved not just by our good intentions, or by our inspiring words – important as these may be – but more by our loving choices sustained by insistent and humble prayer. Prayer such as the one we are gathered here at this Mass to offer. The ultimate sacrifice of the One who came from heaven to earth, in order to bridge for us the distance between time and eternity. To blaze for us a path from death into life.
Sisters and brothers, if we were to each take some time to consider the direction in which our life is heading, what will we find? To which destination are you truly heading today?
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