THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
6 NOVEMBER 2022
There
is an expression in our English language that we sometimes use: “It’s to die for.” A teenage girl might be looking at one of those
glamor magazines and spot a young man.
She can say to her friend, “Isn’t he good looking? He’s to die for!” A car specialist might be at a car show and
say to a friend, “Look at that car. I’d
love to drive it. It’s just to die
for!”
We know that
these expressions are exaggerations. But
today, the Book of Maccabees raises the question, “Just what am I willing to
die for?” This book is set in the second
century before Christ’s birth. The
Syrian ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes is in control of Palestine. He has demanded that everyone must follow all
Greek customs, including the worship of Greek gods. His forces have turned the sacred Temple in
Jerusalem into a gymnasium. They are
pressuring all the descendants of Abraham to abandon their loyalty to their
Jewish faith and customs. To prove that
they have abandoned their faith, the residents are required to eat pork, which
is forbidden by Jewish law. Many people
give in to the demand, thinking that it would save their lives and they could
continue to practice their faith quietly.
However, for this mother and her
seven sons, this is a line that they cannot cross. They refuse to eat a piece of bacon. Because they refuse, each son is brutally
tortured and murdered, along with their mother.
A couple of centuries later after the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, many of his disciples will be called into the public square of their
towns and villages to proclaim that Caesar is lord. Some of them will cross their fingers to save
their lives. However, those who insist
on proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord will be put to death. Centuries later during the Second World War,
the German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was fearless in the face of
torture and death at the hands of the Nazis.
He said to his captors, “There is nothing you have that I want, and
nothing I have you can take away.”
Why have so many people over the
centuries been willing to die for what they believe? Jesus provides the answer in today’s
Gospel. The Sadducees are the Biblical
fundamentalists of their day. They know
that there is no specific mention of resurrection in the Torah (the first five
books of the Bible). They do not accept
later developments. They know that the
Torah allows a widow to marry her deceased husband’s brother, to carry on the
continuity of the family line. They try
to trick Jesus with their ridiculous question, making fun of any belief in
resurrection. But Jesus cuts through
their trick. He affirms the reality of
the resurrection by insisting that risen life is not a continuation of the same
life we experience here. As he will
demonstrate after his own death and burial, risen life is life transformed in
ways that we can never imagine.
It is this belief in the
resurrection that has motivated so many people to be willing to die, even at
the hands of persecutors and murderers.
Martyrs throughout the centuries have trusted in this part of the
Paschal Mystery and have gone to their deaths confident that they would share
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At
every single Mass, that life-giving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is
made present as we remember it.
During November, we pray in a
special way for our deceased loved ones.
We remember them to make sure that they are not forgotten. But we also pray for them. Death is not the end for them. They may be purified by the fire of God’s
love to be part of the Communion of Saints.
They are still part of the Church.
The readings remind us that each of us will face our own deaths. November invites us to deepen our faith in
the resurrection. Maybe we are not being
forced to make a choice about dying for our faith. But we need to die on a daily basis to our
own self-interests to share already in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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