Fellow believers in Christ, we are entering into the final weeks of Ordinary Time, and the focus of our readings now shifts to the end times. Remember the month of November is dedicated to special prayers for our dear ones who have passed away. By way of novenas, recitation of the rosary as well as Mass intentions, we are encouraged to pray for the remission of sins and their admittance into heaven. Our readings today particularly echo belief in the life of the world to come, as we hear stories about people at the very end of their earthly lives.
Refusing to violate Israel’s covenant, the heroic mother and sons in Maccabees embrace death with hope in a future resurrection to life. For Jesus, too, “those deemed worthy to attain to the coming age” will experience “the resurrection of the dead,” and live as “children of God who no longer can die.” Our future is a life completely new, in which we and all those gone before us will be forever alive to God, who “is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
This future bids us to evaluate our own corner of the planet – hearts, homes, communities – for signs that we truly believe “in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.” Respect for ourselves and others, souls and bodies, practical care for neighbors and strangers – this kind of witness affirms that we view our present in the light of our future, and believe that even now, in our midst, stands the Lord of life, the living Jesus!
At this time of the year, as nature begins to shut down for a few months, the Church is reminding us of the temporary nature of all things and of our own mortality. Our Gospel reminds us of the hope we have, that God is not only the God of the living, but also the God who continues to create. Through His Son, He is creating a new world; He is calling us to a new life. And our admittance to that new life depends on the choices that we make, like the Maccabee brothers did. Whether we choose to accumulate; whether we choose a culture of death against the culture of life; whether we choose to live as though reality begins and ends with us – all has implications for our inheritance of life in the world to come.
Fr. Gabriel Wankar
Priest in Residence