November 14, 2022
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on November 6, 2022 at the Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; Psalm 17; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; and Luke 20:27-38.
Every November, as the days grow colder and shorter, the Church invites us to explore our beliefs about what happens after we die.
In the three centuries before the birth of Christ, the Jewish people developed beliefs in angels and the resurrection, as documented in the books of Tobit and Maccabees, among others. The Pharisees accepted these traditions, but the Sadducees only accepted what was written in the ancient Law, the Torah. Since the Torah did not speak directly about life after death, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection. Try to stop me if you’ve heard this one before: that’s why they were sad, you see.
In our gospel passage today, the Sadducees try to prove that life after death is ridiculous by taking one law in the Torah to a preposterous extreme. Jesus explains that it’s not the Torah that’s ridiculous; it’s the Sadducees’ expectation that life in heaven will be a replica of life on earth.
Let us rejoice in what God has mercifully prepared for us in heaven!
You’re probably heard this joke before: a first-grade girl is drawing a picture. The teacher asks, “What are you drawing, Sally?” The girl replies, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” “But Sally,” the teacher says, “no one knows what God looks like.” The little girl responds, “Well, now they will!”
One of our problems as humans is that instead of believing that we are made in God’s image and likeness, we keep trying make God in our image and likeness. When my atheist friends describe their understanding of the Christian God – usually a powerful, uncaring, temperamental man who seems more like the mythological Thor or Zeus – I usually respond, “We’re in complete agreement. I don’t believe in that God, either.”
The Sadducees are trying to make an argument to Jesus for why there can’t be life after death. They can’t comprehend how a woman who marries seven men in succession would be married to all seven of them in the afterlife. Jesus’ response is: exactly. You can’t comprehend it, because you’re trying to make heaven into a carbon copy of earth. Our existence in heaven will be different from how we currently live.
What happens in heaven for those couples who have had a wonderful marriage on earth? What happens in heaven for people who were single, in unhappy marriages, married multiple times, or not allowed to marry their life partner in the Church? The fact of the matter is, we don’t have answers to any of these questions.
We want to understand what will happen to us and our loved ones when we die. But when it comes to talking about dying, death, and eternal life, it’s probably more important to approach it from the emotional side than the intellectual side. We can’t understand what God has prepared for us. All we can do is trust.
We know that in heaven, we will be united with God in a powerful and profound way. The relationships that we each forged during our time on earth will still exist, but how we will relate to one another is beyond our comprehension. St. Paul paraphrased a passage from Isaiah that sums it up:
What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him.
We don’t have a clue what heaven will be like, but we know that our God is a loving God. If we try our best to be disciples of Jesus Christ, we will eventually arrive in heaven, body and soul. As the mystics who have lived among us assure us, whatever moments of joy we’ve experienced here on earth are just an amuse-bouche of the heavenly banquet awaiting us. Heaven will be wonderful beyond our wildest imaginings!
It’s hard enough to understand how we relate to each other here and now. We’re divided politically and religiously. Even families can’t agree on simple things, like who’s going to make dinner, or where to spend Thanksgiving. Collectively, we face the reality of ecological devastation and the possibility of nuclear war.
What do we do as we face these vexing realities? Well, perhaps a good first step is to pray as Jesus taught us: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In other words, we pray to learn how to love as God loves.
And as we learn that, we grow in closer union not only with other people, but with love itself. That is, we grow in closer union with God. And if we ever forget how to love, we need only return here to be reminded of what love is. We – the baptized and the yet-to-be baptized – gather around this altar where Jesus offers himself to each of us, giving us his very self, so that we may believe that we, too, can reach beyond our humanity so that we might share Christ’s divinity.
When I was a seminarian, I spearheaded a huge, complicated reconciliation initiative in Columbus, OH. After some difficulties figuring out how to organize the effort, the initiative achieved great things. In fact, one person called me this past week to tell me about how our invitation to her to join the initiative nearly 14 years ago continues to change her life and the lives of the people around her. I’ll never forget what my friend Katherine said at the first meeting in early 2009. She said: “I imagine that God is creating a large, magnificent canvas, and each of us has only a tiny piece of it to paint. We each need to do our part, and trust that the whole creation will be beautiful.”
Friends: Heaven is not Humanity 2.0. It’s God sharing God’s very life with all of us… if we but dare to respond to God’s invitation.