Reading and meditation on the Word of God, Saturday of the 33rd week of ordinary time, November 23, 2019. 1 Maccabees 6, 1-13; Luke 20, 27-40. Voice: Sr Ernestina fma (reading) and Father Peter sdb (meditation)
The theme for our meditation today is: Curious About Life After Death. A teenager has just become an orphan. His father and mother died consecutively last year and mid of this year. When many people came to mourn his mother, they expressed sadness and cried over the mother.
But the teenager remained calm and welcomed everyone who came. Several people asked why he didn’t look sad and cry. He answered that he only cried in the early moments of death. After that he felt peaceful and full of optimism. He believes his mother will meet his father in heaven.
This young man’s belief that his mother and father were alive again in heaven certainly is not believed by the Sadducees as shown in the Gospel passage of today. They do not believe in bodily resurrection, nor does heaven exist. Therefore they also do not believe in the existence of angels. They only believe that heaven is the joy and satisfaction of this world.
Is the belief that there is no bodily resurrection and no heaven still around us? We who are partaking in this meditation certainly do not belong to that category. We also don’t want to take the risk to force ourselves into the group of people who do not believe in bodily resurrection and eternal life.
Behind that risk is a fate like someone who meets a dead end after going through various roads and directions of life in this world. The end of all is just a death and nothing else. If the terminal or the end is death, the consequence is the spirit of life and the focus of people in this world is no other than to enjoy this world alone of all kinds of enjoyments and situations. Because after this world nothing will be enjoyed.
For example about marriage and family life. The end of life in this world is death. But the new life of men and women will continue in the resurrection as spirits, whose lives as brothers and sisters of God’s children, who no longer need to live as in the world. The spirits cannot marry, the marriage is for the bodies. We just need to prepare ourselves to welcome death and resurrection. Each of us must first be sure, then we need to convince others this very important belief.
If anyone of us curious about what life after death is, the only sure answer is Jesus, because only He has returned from the dead. We just need to listen and follow Him.
Let’s pray. In the name of the Father … Merciful God, strengthen our faith in the resurrection of the body and eternal life that we always long for and pray for. Glory to the Father … In the name of the Father …