Commentary
Sunday, 11/10/2019, Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Be a Winner—Not a Looser
First Reading Commentary: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
If you know the whole story of the event that takes place in today’s first reading, you are aware that a woman and her seven sons were all martyred because they would not submit to an evil king who wanted them to eat pork. What was so bad about eating pork that these people were willing die rather than to eat it? And why was the king so determined to kill these people over something so trivial?
For the woman and her sons, it was a matter of principle which was rooted in their deep faith in God and their religion. So, strong was their faith that they were prepared to die for it.
The king on the other hand, was consumed with evilness rooted in absolute disdain and total hatred for the faith of the woman and her sons. Furthermore, he was full of narcissistic pride as king and was determined to put anyone who disobeyed his laws and decrees to death. As far as he was concerned, his law was the only law.
Here again, we are presented with the opportunity to consider just how far we are willing to go to stand up for our faith. We are also faced with the question of which law is most important—the law of the land or God’s Law?
Yes, God wants us to be good citizens but consider this: the rewards associated with obeying the law of the land are as temporary as this life and sometimes inconsistent with God’s way. There is only one reward for obeying God’s Law but it is eternal and it is life in heaven.
For the woman and her sons, it was not about the pork. It was about their faith and obeying the law so they expressed their willingness to die rather than transgress the laws of their ancestors. Their tongues were cut out; their hands and feet were cut off; they were scalped and burned in a caldron.
The horrible deaths that the mother and her sons suffered at the hands of this evil king are totally unthinkable in today’s time. But there are those who will persecute us for our faith and even today, there are those who die for their faith. It takes total and absolute faith for one to submit to martyrdom. Most of us will never face such persecution but that does not mean that we are not challenged.
We are challenged every day and in many ways. We are challenged by what we see and hear in the media and we are challenged by non-believers who are around us. There are laws in place concerning human life which challenge our faith. All of this, before we even consider the individual crosses that we each carry in life. So how do we cope?
We can only pray to the Holy Spirit asking Him to constantly strengthen us with His gifts of courage and fortitude so that we can stand up to the challenges that come before us. The mother and her sons were full of courage and fortitude. They had no fear because of their strong faith.
The first son said to the king, “…the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying.” This is before Jesus came to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven but this son knew that the Savior was coming and had complete faith in the Kingdom. For that matter, so did his mother and his other brothers. Indeed, they were prophets and they knew that if remaining obedient to God’s law meant giving up their lives, they were willing to give them up because they knew that eternal life in heaven would come to them.
As the king’s men were preparing to carry out their torture on the third son, he said to the king, “It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again.” Our reading tells us that even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage who regarded his suffering as nothing.
The fact of the matter is that the third son blasted the king as being an absolute nobody. The king may have thought that he was powerful because of what he was doing to the mother and her sons but this son was telling the king that he had no power at all. The third son was telling the king that God has the power. God gave him his tongue, hands and feet and God could replace them. God gave him life and God could replace that with a new life that would be eternal. This son was letting the king know that he was no match for God’s awesome power.
When the fourth son was near death he said, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.” Let me rephrase that. “Okay king. Go ahead and kill me. I get to have a life full of peace, joy and happiness forever and ever in heaven. You get to suffer a second death and rot in hell. I win—you loose.”
Now that is a key message in this reading. No matter how difficult the challenge or severe the persecution from others, when we keep the faith and obey God’s laws, we win! We do not wish ill harm on anyone because that would be a violation of the Second Greatest Commandment. It is not about being in competition with other people either. But no matter what anyone says or does to us because of our faith, we win as long, as we stick to our faith. So, the thing to do is to pray for our own faith to be strengthened and for our persecutors to receive faith.
God Is Faithful
Second Reading Commentary: 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5
Paul told the Thessalonians that not everyone is faithful. He prayed for the Thessalonians asking the Father and the Son to encourage and strengthen them and he asked them to pray for him as he continued to spread the Word for the glory of God. This part of Paul’s letter is personal as once again, he pointed out the importance of praying for each other.
If we pray only for our own personal needs, we are being selfish and our prayers carry little weight with God. But when we pray for each other, we show God that we care for each other. That is an expression of faith because we are acting in a way that Jesus wants us to act in accordance with His Second Greatest Commandment. Our prayers get God’s attention much faster and we all become stronger.
Paul told the Thessalonians that the Lord is faithful and that He will strengthen them and guard them from; the evil one. Yes, God is faithful to us. He always has been and always will be. God never fails to deliver on a promise and never fails to deliver to us what we need. God does not ask us to do anything that he is not willing to do for us and God does not ask us to do anything that he has not already done for us.
So, when considering, the fact that God does ask us to give Him everything, remember that He sent the Son for our salvation. Don’t get it twisted. God has already given all of Himself to us and continues to do so each and every day. That is how faithful God is to us and we should be no less faithful to Him.
Our God is a Living God of the Living
Gospel Commentary: Luke 20:27-38
The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection so they questioned Jesus with the story of the married man who died leaving seven brothers. In those days, it was the custom that if a married man died having no heirs, his brother, if he had one, married the widow in an effort, to produce an heir. In this story, the man had seven brothers and each of them died before producing an heir to the widow. So, the Sadducees asked, “At the resurrection whose wife will she be?”
Jesus said, “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…they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.”
Jesus was telling the Sadducees that marriage as we know it here on earth does not exist in heaven. Once we die to this life, we leave everything behind. If our name is written in the book of life, we will be raised on the last day and we will share eternal life with God in heaven.
There is another reason why we do not marry in the Kingdom. Jesus did not give this as part of His answer to the Sadducees but He is the Groom and everyone who enters the Kingdom is the bride. Just as each of us is an individual part of the Mystical Body, each person that enters the Kingdom is an individual part of the Bride of Christ. We are the Father’s children married to His Son who is the Groom. This is a difficult mystery for us to understand in our humanity but we accept it on faith.
The Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed with each other on the matter of resurrection but that was not the point that Jesus was making here. Our God is a living God and a God of the living.
When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and spoke of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He inferred that they were living. For that to be true; there must be a life after. Our physical bodies here on earth will die but in the Kingdom of Heaven, we will be raised and our spirits will live forever.
The Sadducees could not accept the fact that there is a life after death because their minds were closed. They could not understand that the Kingdom of Heaven is not of this world. In order, to understand Jesus' answer, one must step out of the box and stop thinking about things which are only of this world.
Our God is not a statue or painting or anything else which is physical and made by human hands. Our God is a Spirit who is very much alive, always has been and always will be. In the person of the Son, our God has defeated death and therefore cannot die. Our God is a God of the living which means that on the last day, those who put their faith in Him will rise to live with Him forever.
