Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Vigil

November 9, 2019

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/11.8.19_Landry_Con_Con_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us this Sunday.

* Jesus will speak to us about the reality of heaven. His affirmation happens in conversation with a group called the Saduccees, who were mainly members of the high priestly elites, who didn’t believe in the Resurrection. They only accepted the first five books of the Bible — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers — and thought that there was no reference there at all to resurrection from the dead. So to try to test Jesus they brought to him the invented example of a woman who married successively seven different brothers after each previous brother had died. If she had become one flesh with seven different men until death did they part, they asked, then with whom would she be on flesh at the resurrection, if they were now all alive? Because she couldn’t be, they supposed, one flesh with all of them, there couldn’t be a resurrection.

* Jesus’ answer highlighted things.

* 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 implies 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 in the afterlife! But while there will be no marriage and conjugal sexual activity in heaven, there will certainly be love! Marriage in this world is meant to prepare spouses and children to enter into that love, the perfect love of God and the love of the communion of saints. And marriage is particularly well-suited to achieve this purpose.

* The second thing he says is that, contrary to Sadducees’ idea, the Pentateuch does speak about marriage. Jesus says that God revealed this when he spoke to Moses out of the burning bush and called himself the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” He’s the God not of the dead but of the living,” and hence Abraham, Isaac and Jacob couldn’t be truly dead. Eternal life, therefore, is real.

* November is the time in which the Church always has us focus on the four last things — death, judgment, heaven and hell. At the beginning of the month, we celebrate All Saints’ Day, in which we remember and ask the intercession of all those who have arrived at the place to which we aspire. The next day we mark All Souls’ Day, and remember and pray for all the dead, especially those who are in need of our prayers and sacrifices to enter into paradise. And throughout the month, the Church keeps the four last things in front of us. First, the fact that each of us will die, some of us by surprise, much earlier than we think. Second, as soon as we die, we will be judged. Jesus gives us the criteria of that final exam of life, but we need to be ready for it, by a life of Christian faith, hope and love.