FIRST READING
Revelation 11:4-12
I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me:
Here are my two witnesses: These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone wanting to harm them is sure to be slain. They have the power to close up the sky so that no rain can fall during the time of their prophesying. They also have power to turn water into blood and to afflict the earth with any plague as often as they wish.
When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will wage war against them and conquer them and kill them. Their corpses will lie in the main street of the great city, which has the symbolic names “Sodom” and “Egypt,” where indeed their Lord was crucified. Those from every people, tribe, tongue, and nation will gaze on their corpses for three and a half days, and they will not allow their corpses to be buried. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and be glad and exchange gifts because these two prophets tormented the inhabitants of the earth. But after the three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them. When they stood on their feet, great fear fell on those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, “Come up here.” So they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies looked on.
RESPONSORIAL PSALM
Psalm 144:1, 2, 9-10
R. (1b) Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!
Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war.
R. Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!
My mercy and my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, My shield, in whom I trust, who subdues my people under me.
R. Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!
O God, I will sing a new song to you; with a ten‑stringed lyre I will chant your praise, You who give victory to kings, and deliver David, your servant from the evil sword.
R. Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!
ALLELUIA
See 2 Timothy 1:10
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GOSPEL
Luke 20:27-40
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” 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 ‘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.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
REFLECTIONS:
Is your life earthbound or heavenbound? The Sadducees
had one big problem they could not conceive of heaven beyond what they
could see with their naked eyes! Aren't we often like them? We don't recognize
spiritual realities because we try to make heaven into an earthly image.
The Sadducees came to Jesus with a test question to make the resurrection
look ridiculous. The Sadducees, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe in
immortality, nor in angels or evil spirits. Their religion was literally
grounded in an earthly image of heaven. Jesus retorts by dealing with the
fact of the resurrection. The scriptures give proof of it. In Exodus 3:6,
when God manifests his presence to Moses in the burning bush, the Lord
tells him that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He shows
that the patriarchs who died hundreds of years previously were still alive
in God. Jesus defeats their arguments by showing that God is a living God
of a living people. God was the friend of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when
they lived. That friendship could not cease with death. As Psalm 73:23-24
states: "I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide
me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory."
The ultimate proof of the resurrection is the Lord Jesus and his victory
over death when he rose from the tomb. Before Jesus raised Lazarus from
the dead, he exclaimed: "I am the resurrection and the life; he
who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives
and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" (John
11:25). Jesus asks us the same question. Do you believe in the resurrection
and in the promise of eternal life with God?
The Holy Spirit reveals to us the eternal truths of God's unending love
and the life he desires to share with us for all eternity. Paul the Apostle,
quoting from the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 64:4; 65:17) states: "What no
eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has
prepared for those who love him," God has revealed to us through the Spirit
(1
Corinthians 2:9-10). The promise of paradise heavenly bliss and unending
life with an all-loving God is beyond human reckoning. We have only begun
to taste the first-fruits! Do you live now in the joy and hope of the life
of the age to come?
"May the Lord Jesus put his hands on our eyes also, for then we too
shall begin to look not at what is seen but at what is not seen. May he
open the eyes that are concerned not with the present but with what is
yet to come, may he unseal the heart's vision, that we may gaze on God
in the Spirit, through the same Lord, Jesus Christ, whose glory and power
will endure throughout the unending succession of ages." (Prayer of Origen,
185-254 AD)
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