Homily: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Well, it’s the beginning of November
and so you know what that means, right?
Yep, the Christmas assault has begun.
And it’s the first Sunday of November so that also means that we have
two more full days before our national election finally takes place and we can
end at least one of these assaults on our consciousness. For us as Catholics the beginning of November
also indicates that we are approaching the end of the Liturgical Year. As we do so, our readings make a shift from
focusing on the nuts and bolts of discipleship and onto considerations about
the end of time.
This week, the focus is on the reality
of the resurrection of the dead. This is
an important consideration, of course, but not only because of what we believe
about Jesus (Saint Paul has said that “if there is no resurrection from the
dead, then Jesus Christ is still dead and our faith is useless”), but also
because it means something about how we live our lives before we die. Our first reading illustrates this for us
nicely.
In our first reading today, we heard
the testimony of three of the seven Israelite brothers who with their mother
were being tortured by the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes in order to get
them to apostatize—that is, denounce their faith—by eating pork, which they
believed God forbade them to eat. Each
of these three courageously handed over their lives to their torturers rather
than denounce their faith in God by breaking the Law that he had given them;
and it was the strength of their faith in the fact that God could and would
raise them to life again that gave them that courage. In other words, they believed in God’s
promise of eternal life to those who remained faithful to his Laws and
commandments and so they knew that if they kept themselves pure according to
God’s law that, even if they should die at the hands of men, God would one day
raise them to life again. And so we see that our belief in the resurrection
means something about how we live our lives before we die: if there’s no
resurrection, eat pork and enjoy your life, while you have it; if there is a
resurrection, then we ought to conform to the laws and commandments of the one
through whom the resurrection will come (that is, God), so as not to incur his
wrath.
In the Gospel reading, in answering
the dilemma that the Sadducees put forth, Jesus doesn’t describe for us how we
should live our lives in this world, but rather describes a glimpse of how eternal
life will look. He describes life after
the resurrection of the dead as one in which those who have been raised to life
“can no longer die”, indicating that it will be an immortal life which will
extend through all eternity. Eternity, I
think, can be a very hard thing to imagine, however. Fr. Larry Richards, who is a parish priest
from Erie, Pennsylvania and who travels to speak nationally, has one of the
best illustrations about length of time which is eternity and he describes it
in this way: Imagine that, in eternity, every step requires 1,000 years to take
and that you have been given the job to take every grain of sand from every
beach and on every ocean floor, one at a time, to the top of Mt. Everest. You can imagine the countless billions of years
that it would take to accomplish this task. Yet once you have finished this
task, eternity is just beginning. He
describes it in this way in order to put into sharp contrast the reality that
with our infinitesimally short time on earth (in comparison to eternity) we
will determine how we will spend eternity (either in heaven or in hell). Thus, once again, our belief in the
resurrection of the dead means something about how we ought to live our lives
before we die.
Those of you who have gotten to know
me a bit know that, even though I grew up in (what is now) the far south-west
suburbs of Chicago, I’ve always been a “north-sider” at heart. Thus, you can imagine (and, perhaps, many of
you share) my joy that the Cubs finally won a championship after so many years
of heartache. As I reflected on how they
won this championship, I began to see a connection in this celebration (and
what it took to get there) and our lives a Christians.
In order to win the World Series, this
year’s Cubs team had to battle hard.
Even though they ended the season with the best record in baseball, they
still had to fight, day-in and day-out, in order to stay on top. Then, in the Series itself, they had to
battle from behind and win three straight games in order to spark the
celebration that would fill them and their many millions of fans with
inconceivable joy. Very often the
Christian life is no different.
When someone acknowledges that the
resurrection of the dead is, indeed, real and thus that how they live in this
life determines how they will spend eternal life, then he or she begins to see
this life as a battle and thus begins to fight, day-in and day-out, in order to
win the prize of eternal life in heaven.
Because of our fallen nature, he or she will occasionally have to battle
from behind; but nothing will deter him or her as he or she seeks to accomplish
this goal: to experience the joy of entering into heaven for all eternity—a joy
of which we got a glimpse when we saw the incredible joy of both the Cubs and
their fans when they won the championship.
My brothers and sisters, if we are not
living this life as if it is a battle for how we will live after the
resurrection of the dead—in holy fear of the one who will raise us from the
dead—then we can have little hope both of accomplishing that goal and of
experiencing the joy that comes when we accomplish it. Therefore, we must engage the battle if we
hope also to experience the victory.
Perhaps many of you have heard my
prophesy that when the Cubs finally win the world series it will be a sign that
Jesus is coming back and that the world is coming to an end. The jury’s still out on whether or not my
prophesy is true (though, if you ask Fr. Clayton, he’ll tell you that he thinks
that it is true, but that we have to wait until after Tuesday to find out
exactly how it’s going to happen).
Nevertheless, it should, along with the readings that we will be hearing
over these next few weeks, invite us to consider once again whether we are
fighting to win the battle against the world or if we are, in fact, colluding
with it: so that we might change our actions accordingly and fight so as to be
ready to enjoy the victory when the fulfillment of God’s promise of
resurrection comes to us.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ,
risen from the dead, is the first fruit of that victory. As we offer back to God this victory that
Jesus won for us, let us ask for the grace to keep up the good fight and thus
prepare ourselves to enjoy the spoils of his victory: eternal life with him in
heaven.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – November 6th, 2016
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