32nd Sunday: The World to Come?

So what happens when you die? When Jesus rose from the dead, St. Thomas, who believed in the Resurrection at the end of time, was shocked. He said he wouldn’t believe until he could put his finger in the nail holes in the Lord’s hands and side. Was he shocked that Jesus’ body wasn’t healed? What about marriage, will you know your spouse and children? Will the wounds there be healed? The gospels in November all take a turn towards the end of time. What is coming and what should we plan for? Many think, perhaps, that Jesus came up with the idea of the Resurrection. Jesus is the only person we know of that was resurrected, but the Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed in the Resurrection. That belief goes back to the time of Isaiah in the 6 ^th Century B.C. and the Maccabean revolt in the 2 ^nd Century B.C.
 
The Maccabees
The story of the Maccabees takes place about two hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander the Great and the Greek phalanx overran the middle east in the 4 ^th Century B.C. and after his death his Greek generals split up his empire. The Seleucid dynasty ruled Judah and tried to undermine the Jewish religion by imposing Greek beliefs. Some Jews went along with the Greeks and that lead to a civil war. The Maccabees, an orthodox Jewish group, rebelled against the Greeks and their Jewish converts. The first reading concerns the martyrdom of seven brothers who refused to eat pork and defile themselves before God. As each died, they proclaimed their defiance of the Greek occupiers. In the midst of their suffering, they testified to their faith in the resurrection and the new world to come.

At the point of death he said:
"You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying." After him the third suffered their cruel sport.
He put out his tongue at once when told to do so,
and bravely held out his hands, as he spoke these noble words:
"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."
2 Macc. 7:1-14

 Interestingly, the Sadducees have their roots in the Maccabean revolt. They were the party of the temple, linked to the Temple priesthood and were Jewish political leaders. It is believed that they ceased to exist after the destruction of the Temple by the Roman Legions in 70 A.D. Of course, when they interrogated Jesus in today’s Gospel, they want to demonstrate that the belief in the Resurrection is not well-founded. Instead, God rewards his faithful in this life for their piety. The Sadducees have reaped their rewards. It is good to be a Sadducee.
 
Jesus and the Sadducees
The Sadducees denied certain beliefs common to the Pharisees and others, chief among them was the Resurrection. Once you died, that was it!  The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible, commonly called the books of Moses or the Pentateuch—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They refused to recognize the historical books – 1&2 Kings, 1&2 Chronicles and so forth - or the prophets— Isaiah, Jeremiah and so forth. So they had a much smaller canon of Jewish Scriptures. They claimed the Resurrection of the dead was not biblical, because they refused to recognize the same bible as other Jews.
 
Levirate marriage
Levirate marriage is taught in the Pentateuch. In Levirate marriage, if a man’s brother died, he had the responsibility to marry the widow of his brother.  For those that believed in the Resurrection it was, at the end of time, a bodily existence, the reunion of the soul and the body after death in a New Creation. Isaiah talked about a new Heavens and a new Earth Isaiah 65 and 66. The Sadducees point, was how could one woman have seven husbands? Why would that be heaven?
 
Jesus’ response
Jesus argued from Exodus 3:6 in a manner that left nothing to respond to:

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.” And some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any questions.

 Live like angels

1. The common Jewish belief is that this sinful, suffering world of death would pass away ushering in the new age of the world to come[i]. The Resurrection, what we think of as the general resurrection, would be part of that age to come. Jesus taught that marriage would not be part of the world to come because there is no need for procreation. We are immortal like angels, but we don’t become angels. Angels don’t reproduce and we won’t reproduce.
2. Jesus uses the Penateuch/Torah to support his conclusion. In Exodus 3, the story of the burning bush, where God appears to the Moses:

“I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Ex. 3:6

He is arguing scripture and refuting the Sadducees’ claim that the Torah doesn’t support the resurrection of the dead. God is the God of the living, not the dead. Jesus wins his own Resurrection is a demonstration!

Marriage and Holy Orders
So what about the Sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders? Sacraments are visible signs of an unseen grace. They direct us towards the Kingdom of God and are, in some sense, a participation in and experience of the Kingdom.
 
Marriage
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says,

The grace of this Sacrament perfects the love of husband and wife, binds them together in fidelity, and helps them welcome and care for children. Christ is the source of this grace and he dwells with the spouses to strengthen their covenant promises, to bear each other’s burdens with forgiveness and kindness, and to experience ahead of time the “wedding feast of the Lamb” (Rev 19:9). United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). United States Catholic Catechism for Adults . United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Kindle Edition.  

 The relationship of spouses will not be less perfect in the resurrection; it will be more perfect, because you will be perfectly united to Christ and perfectly united to one another. But the sacramental bond of marriage will in fact pass away because you will experience the reality of what marriage promises. There will be no more procreation. There will be no more reproduction. There will only be new creation. Celibacy is the prophetic sign of that new creation.
 
Holy Orders
All the baptized share in the priesthood of Jesus Christ. The ministerial sacrament of bishop, priest and deacon shares in a “special way” in Jesus’ priesthood, according to the Catechism.

“The ministerial priesthood differs in essence from the common priesthood of the faithful because it confers a sacred power for the service of the faithful. The ordained ministers exercise their service for the People of God by teaching ( munus docendi), divine worship ( munus liturgicum) and pastoral governance ( munus regendi)” (CCC, no. 1592). Deacons in the Latin Church can baptize and witness the Sacrament of Marriage, as do priests and bishops.” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). United States Catholic Catechism for Adults . United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Kindle Edition.

 But the ministerial priesthood is also a sacrament of this world [ii] and we will all experience our priesthood in a perfected way in the Kingdom. Celibacy of Latin Rite priests is a prophetic sign of that kingdom to come.
 
Sacraments are signs of the world to come and are efficacious means of God’s sanctifying grace that help the Church in its journey to God. They point to a world that Jesus described for the Sadducees. That marriage and holy order is of this world doesn’t make them less, it promises more to us.