The Church as Mother, Preparing Sons and Daughters Courageously for Eternity, Thirty-Second Sunday (C), November 6, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry<br /> Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan<br /> Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C<br /> November 6, 2022<br /> 2 Macc 7:1-2.9-14, Ps 17, 2 Thess 2:16-3:5, Lk 20:27-38   To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:  https://traffic.libsyn.com/sec....ure/catholicpreachin   The following text guided the homily:  Most people, no matter what their age, prefer not to think about death, judgment and our eternal destiny. But it’s a particular temptation for young people, who spend far more time thinking about their short-term future on earth than about their long-term future in the new heavens and new earth. That’s why the Church wisely and mercifully has all of us focus on the last things every November as we conclude the liturgical year because throughout the Gospels, Jesus reminds us that we do not know the day or the hour and that we always have to be vigilant so that when Jesus comes for us, he doesn’t surprise us like a thief in the night, but finds us ready with outstretched arms. Today’s readings help us to focus on heaven and on the path and virtues that will lead us there, hoping that we will live each day with wisdom in mind. In the Gospel, Jesus speaks about heaven in conversation with a group called the Sadducees, who were members of the high priestly caste. The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — what are called the Torah in Hebrew or Pentateuch in Greek — and didn’t believe in the resurrection of the body because they erroneously thought that there no reference to it in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. To try to test Jesus and prove their point about the supposed impossibility of the resurrection of the body, they brought to Jesus the invented example of a woman who married successively seven different brothers after each previous brother had died. If according to the language of Genesis, she had become “one flesh” with seven different men until death they parted, they asked, then with whom would she be one flesh in the resurrection, if there were a resurrection? Since it is ridiculous to think that she would be united in one flesh to seven simultaneously, they concluded, there couldn’t be a resurrection. Jesus’ answer highlighted two essential things about heaven. First, he said that it’s only the children of this age who marry and remarry. In heaven, he states, there will be no marrying or giving in marriage because there will only be one wedding, the wedding feast of the Lamb and his Bride the Church. The institution and sacrament of marriage, Jesus indicates, is a reality for this world. The reason for this is pretty clear. Marriage has a two-fold purpose, love and life, or, in more traditional terminology, the mutual sanctification of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. In heaven, there’s no purpose to marriage because men and women no longer need to be sanctified since they’re already saints; and there will be no new children because saints aren’t having babies and baptisms in the afterlife!