Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

At the 11th hour on the 11th day in the 11th month in 1918, WWI ended. Armistice Day then became Veterans Day now and on Monday, November 11 we honor our veterans, over 18 million men and women in our military.  I invite our veterans to stand for our applause.  Thank you for your service to our country.

Many thoughtful people seem to be searching for solutions to solve the ever-increasing challenges we face. But don’t fret; our forebears faced similar challenges.  For example, Cicero, a Roman statesman and author, wrote in 55 BC: “The…budget must be balanced.” Cicero would be shocked at today’s national debt. And Livy, a Roman historian in the first century AD, objected to the moral rot and slipping standards of conduct in society. So maybe it really is true: there's nothing new under the sun.  Always remember: an all-good creator God is guiding this universe toward some future glorious end-point.

Today’s word of God situates us in the second century before Jesus. Syria occupies Israel. The king, Antiochus IV, is a tyrant—some would say a madman—determined to replace Jewish religious practices with Hellenic or Greek practices. The result is open rebellion. Here the author of the book of Maccabees describes the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons. They stood up for their beliefs and died for them. The author may be asking us, do we speak up for what’s right? Or do we simply go along to get along.

The author of the Letter to the Christian community at Thessaloniki in Greece urges the community to stay the course, to persevere in their discipleship with Jesus. God will strengthen them, the author writes, so that they can fix their hearts on God and the things of God. That’s a good message for us as well.

In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus and the Sadducees talk about mortality and immortality. The Sadducees didn’t believe in life after death. Here they try to argue their case with an absurd example of seven brothers marrying the same sister-in-law and then each immediately dying. “Who’s her husband in the next life?” the Sadducees ask.

But Jesus turns the argument against them. He distinguishes between “this age” and “the next age.” What if in the next life God transforms us into a spiritualized body, a body raised to a new dimension? And besides, even Moses alluded to life after death. Here Jesus leaves the Sadducees dumbfounded.

The topic of the torture of the mother and her children – sadly, not a hypothetical in recent news -- segues into the mystery of suffering from a Christian perspective. Our faith proclaims that hidden in every Good Friday is the glory of Easter. We believe that God transformed the dead body-person of Jesus on Good Friday into a new awesome reality at the Easter dawn. Unlike a mortal body, the risen Christ could pass through locked doors; he could walk along a road to Emmaus or eat on the shore of the sea of Galilee and then “vanish.” It was a new kind of spiritual embodiment.

The point is simple: the resurrection of Jesus was real, even though the disciples couldn’t name his new mode of spiritual embodiment. And that new spiritualized body one day will be ours.

Meantime, we have our Good Fridays. Sometimes problems seem to overwhelm us. A family member loses a job, or has a life-threatening illness, or sees a significant relationship begin to unravel. In such times, our faith challenges us to remember that the narrative of Jesus did not end in the tragedy of the cross but in the triumph of the resurrection.

In the midst of so-called bad luck, we may even wonder, where is God? This eternal question is highlighted in the book of Job, in the Confessions of Saint Augustine, in the literature of the novelist Dostoevsky, and in recent best sellers like Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Moreover, as we reflect upon the human situation today -- violence in the middle east, denial of basic human rights in some countries, chaos in others -- we realize that our planet is wounded, so to speak, and cries out for a transcendent healer.

Yes, at times, suffering does result from immoral behavior, from the misuse of freedom. Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot, for example, and many other tyrants, created untold sufferings. At other times, suffering results from uncontrolled natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes and earthquakes, from an unfinished, incomplete universe, a universe in process toward an ultimate goal.

But ultimately, suffering is a mystery.

But how respond to it? First, we have to remember that God is always near us, closer to us than we are to ourselves. God forever seeks to bring us to the fullness of life. So, chisel in your consciousness the words of scripture, “Can a mother forget her child? And even if she does, I will never forget you.”

Second, avoid negative judgments about ourselves if we are experiencing a bad patch, so to speak. To think, I really deserve it, is a form of self-hatred. God loves us unconditionally, forgives us unconditionally and accepts us unconditionally.

Finally, we ought to remember that the mystery of inescapable suffering has healing and redemptive power. Because Jesus, through the mystery of his horrible death and glorious resurrection, healed us, reconnected us to God in friendship. Yes, our everyday inescapable aches and pains, borne with love, can be redemptive, can bring forth new depths of life in ourselves and in others. Why? Because the sufferings of Jesus have brought forth a new and awesome transformed life for us.

As we remember our deceased loved ones in November, we may ask, how do we come to terms with our own dying? Most of us do not long with St. Paul “to be free from this earthly life so that we can be with the risen Christ.” Many pass through Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s stages of death and dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and ultimately acceptance.

Some counselors help people cope by encouraging them to begin drafting their last letter to loved ones. This may highlight the most important gifts we leave behind: love, faith in God, hope in life eternal, compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. There’s even a template on the Internet.

In the Christian vision of things, we expect that the all-good Creator God who continually amazes us will surprise us in the moment of our dying. And so, as we reflect on today’s readings, let us recall that hidden in the dying of Jesus was the glory of his resurrection. And hidden within our own dying is the glory of eternal life. Death is not the end but a beginning of a new awesome life. Amen.
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