Saturday of the Thirty-ThirdWeek in Ordinary Time
We are destined to the eternity
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him, 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 … and they are the children of God. Lk 20,27-36
In the yesterday’s gospel the pharisees acted to try to make troubles to Jesus, in the today passage the sadducees are reacting as such and other times the scribes will behave in this way; all categories of persons normally in opposition one to the another, but all in agreement in relation to the enmity towards that new rabbi. This is a good sign, because the people are like the laws: when they are disappointing, this means that these are right laws. The sadducees pose to Jesus a question about the resurrection which for us is of paramount importance. They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead people, but instead of putting directly the issue, they do it with that question-trap reported in the today’s gospel, on which Jesus is not caught as unprepared, although the question is specious. At the heart of the christian revelation is, on the contrary, the resurrection of the dead people, without which “and if Christ has been not raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, our faith” (1Cor 15,14). The problem of the man, in fact, is to give an ultimate sense to his life, because each earthly project is always frustrated by the reality of the death, which is the tomb of each human hope. In addition to the resurrection of Christ there are two logical reasons which ensure the eternity of the life: these are the fidelity and the love of God which, being infinite, cannot end with the death. The God of whom Jesus speaks is not the same God of the philosophers: he is a God who makes with the man, with every man, an eternal friendship and alliance. This story of love of God for the man cannot be ended because it would presuppose the existence of a higher Being who is limited and therefore he would not be a true God. Our daily dialogue with him in the prayer cannot be other than eternal and it must be completed after the death in the fullness, because what is now hope will become certainty. And what we see today in the half-light we will see in the light, otherwise the love of God and the revelation of Jesus Christ would collapse. St. Paul tells us: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, or any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8,38-39). This certainly gives to the man an endless serenity.