We were created to go home to be with God forever. From God’s viewpoint, it was why we were conceived. From God’s viewpoint, it is why we were baptized. From God’s viewpoint, it is why he has patiently sought us throughout our lives. Whether God has had to frequently chase us down or whether he mostly found us living out our Christian life quietly in family and community, God created us to be with him forever.
That may have always been God’s point of view, but each of us is busy living and loving in our little space of the world, mostly seeing what is right in front of us at the moment. We have not focused on that longer view. We may have not thought much about Eternal Life.
Caring for our soul in light of Eternal Life means that we need to change our horizon. We need to enlarge our view to see what God sees: our soul and its needs to enter into Eternal Life.
The Church, from the beginning, has been very, very interested in our soul. It is our soul that remains alive, even as our bodies do not. It is our soul who goes, at the moment of our death, to God.
Our faith is filled with rich food for the soul as it looks toward its destiny. Beginning with All Saints and All Souls Days this past week, the Church fills the liturgies of November with scriptures that remind us that where we are and what we are doing is not the sum and summit of our lives. Nor will anything else we ever do on earth be the height of our existence.
The sum and summit of our lives comes after we die. My experience is that we all want to go to heaven. None of us want to go today. So, we put thoughts of Eternal Life out of our minds. Consequently, we don’t know as much about Eternal Life as we could. Since the readings this month lead us to think about these things, my Catholic Moment reflections for the next few weeks will use the readings to describe some of what the Church teaches us about Eternity.
II Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14
II Maccabees was written in Greek to Hellenized Jews in the 2nd century BC—maybe only a 100 years before Christ. Its purpose was to explain the religious significance of events during the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BC) in Palestine. Today’s scripture is a description of the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons. Despite the torture, they stayed true to Jewish Law and Commandments. It is hard to read this story. It is hard to think of dying over eating pork. The point, of course, is not about the rights or wrongs or importance of diet, but rather how faithful a person is to God. First and Second Maccabees is also important in Scripture because both books talk about Communion of the Saints and Eternal Life. The family in the first reading chose to die because of their faith in Eternal Life. Their strong belief in an eternal life that was more than a shadowy underworld of the dead is an important link in our story of salvation. By the time Jesus was born a century and a half later, there was a widespread belief in some form of a true “life” after death.
However, it was a matter of theological conjecture until Jesus rose from the dead. When Jesus, the Christ, God-in-the-flesh rose from the dead, the horizons of all of history changed. What was an act of great faith for the mother and her sons is a matter of well-established belief these 2000 years later.
II Thessalonians 2:16-3:5
II Thessalonians was written to clear up some misunderstandings in the Christian community at Thessalonica about when Christ will come again. Someone had written a false letter that said the Second Coming was to be very soon. Paul clarifies in this letter that we don’t know when Christ will return. We simply know, because he said so, that he will. The selection for today’s reading is Paul’s encouragement to remain strong in faith. The last sentence says it all: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.”
Luke 20:27-38
A friend of mine and I are bantering around in text and conversation these days about the Holy Spirit. We are sometimes asking each other hard questions—in order to better understand. My sense is that Jesus was in a similar banter with some Sadducees in today’s Gospel. They created a hypothetical scenario to see what Jesus would say. As always, he answered in a way that preserved Jewish teaching—and stretched it.
However, his answer can trouble us.
Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.”
Common church teaching is that we will know each other in heaven. We will know, love, and be reunited with those we love. It is included in official funeral liturgies, supported by visions of saints and near-death experiences of many people. However, I could not find it specifically in the Catholic catechism nor in an authoritative, magisterial statement in seven books about Catholic teaching on death and dying.
The most helpful information among my resources came from Scott Hahn’s Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body. He summarizes the catechism on Eternal Life and says, “When it comes to the resurrection of our bodies, we know exactly five things: (1) God…will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ resurrection” (2) “All the dead will rise” (3) “All of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear” (4) Our resurrection is connected with the Eucharist (5) This resurrection will happen on ‘the last day’. (CCC 997-1001 summarized in Hope to Die, p 92.)
Hahn goes on to summarize Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and other theologians who take what is definitive in Scripture (including today’s Gospel) to come to an understanding that we will be ourselves, but glorified, and that as ourselves we will love and know EVERYONE with the same kind of love and knowledge that God has—for we will have a Beatific Vision—the vision of God.
I take that to mean we will know husband or wife, parents or children, friends—and all the saints in a glorified, not-to-be-comprehended-on-earth way.
It is a reminder that the mind of God is far beyond my mind, the heart of God is far beyond my heart, and God doesn’t tell us all we want to know. The assurance of Eternal Life is strong; the details remain for us wrapped in Mystery.
Prayer:
Thank You, Lord, for what we do know of Eternal Life—the most important thing: You are there, You created us for it; in it, we will be united with You and with others in Eternal Love. Forgive me, Lord, for wanting a clearer picture. Help me always to trust You, for You are God—and I am not. You are trustworthy, faithful, good, and loving. Help me to always live in the present with the future in mind–then trust my future to You.
