(1 Mc 6:1-13, Ps 9:2-3 and 6, 16 and 19, Lk 20:27-40)
“Who will Grandma be married to in heaven?” I asked my mother when I was 10-years-old. After four years as a widow, my grandmother was planning to marry a gentleman she had been seeing for a while in a small, late January ceremony that corresponded with Super Bowl Sunday. (Needless to say few of the male family members were happy with the choice of dates, but that’s another blog post for another day.)
Football aside, I found the whole concept of marriage after death confusing. I knew my grandmother had been married to my grandfather and when she died, she would be buried next to him, but I was a little confused as to how the new guy fit into this scenario. Would he be buried on the other side of her? How would Grandpa feel about that? And what would happen in heaven? Would she be married to both of them in the hereafter, or just one of them? If so, which one? If she died before her new husband did, would she return to Grandpa by default? What if she outlived the new guy and they were both waiting for her? How would God riddle that one out?
In every family, there is that one person who has more “What if” questions than anyone else. No matter what situation they find themselves in or circumstances they are presented with, they can always be counted upon to come up with the most convoluted scenarios that most likely, will never happen. I was that person. It wasn’t that I wanted to trap my mother with my concerns, but at the time I was a kid who merely wanted to understand marital law as it applied in Heaven. I also wanted to know if my dad’s favorite team ended up in the Super Bowl, would we still have to go to the wedding?
My mother assured me that even if the Green Bay Packers were winning in a blow out we would still be at the wedding, but she was much more vague about the other issues. Especially the one regarding my grandmother’s marital status. “I don’t think that matters in Heaven,” she told me. “I don’t think we are married to anyone in Heaven like we are here,” she said.
It was a difficult concept to try and wrap my head around. How could anyone not be married in Heaven like they were here on Earth? I was raised to believe that marriage was a sacrament instituted by God Himself. It’s a vocation. It’s a lifetime commitment. Did she honestly think all bets were off after death and everyone got to start all over? If so, then what was going on up there? I had visions of a giant singles club in the clouds in which old people cruised for a new mate while pretending not to know the person they had spent the last 40, 50 or even 60 years with. It might have made sense if the marriage wasn’t all that great, but what if two people were really happy? Why wouldn’t God let them stay together forever?
Like the Sadducees in today’s gospel, I was guilty of taking the laws that bind us here on Earth, transferring them to another plane of existence and expecting them to make sense. It’s understandable given my age at the time, but when I think back on my mother’s answer I still struggle with the meaning behind it. It’s impossible to envision a life beyond this reality in which we are free from choices, consequence and focused solely on being happy in the presence of God. We are so accustomed to our established routine that we cannot imagine living in a world devoid of hierarchal structure and terrestrial relationships. My mother may be right…perhaps when we transcend from this life into another it doesn’t matter who your friends were, what family you came from or who your spouse is…
But there will always be that 10-year-old inside of me asking, “But what if it does?”
