He is not God of the Dead but of the Living"

Today's Mass Readings

Clearly, the theme of today’s readings is life and death. Intertwined within those themes are the words of Jesus, “He is the not the God of dead but of the living” (Lk 20:37). The manner in which these themes occur in the readings seem to suggest the fact that belief in life after death was not necessarily an universal Jewish belief. This is obvious in the gospel reading. The Sadducees (a Jewish sect) came up to Jesus with the hypothetical case of a woman who married seven brothers as each of them successively died. The Sadducees accepted the teaching of only the first five books of the Old Testament and in these books belief in the afterlife had not specifically mentioned.

By the time of the Maccabees, about one hundred and fifty years before the coming of Christ, belief in the resurrection of the dead was clearly established. For example, in today’s first reading, when the seven brothers and their mother were being put to death for refusing to accept Greek practices unacceptable to the Jews, one of the brothers says to the Antiochus Epiphanes, their persecutor, “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever” (2 Mac 7:9).

By the time of Jesus, the resurrection from the dead was accepted as an article of Jewish faith, except for the Sadducees. In fact, Jesus claimed that he was the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25).

These readings bring us tremendous consolation and offer hope of us who have experienced the death of a dear one. The greatest gift God had given us is a participation in the life of God. Christ opened the door for us to participate in the God’s very life. Christ, then, eliminates death. We move from life to life.

Every Eucharist is a celebration of life. That is why Jesus said, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" (Jn 6:54). Let our celebration of life (Eucharist) lead us to eternal life.

- Fr. Satish Joseph