Breaking the Word

32^nd Week in Ord. Time, Monday – 07^th November 2022 — Gospel: Lk 17,1-6

Maturing Faith

When the apostles ask Jesus to help them increase their faith, they are expressing their understanding that faith is not a moment, but a journey. They recognized their need for guidance and direction from Jesus as they grow in faith. Those with maturing faith will be less likely to stumble, and they will not waver in the face of opposition.  Jesus does not directly respond to their request because he knows that their faith will certainly grow through his teaching, example and the sending of the Spirit. Rather, through the illustration he provokes wonder and assurance about their capacity of faith.

32^ndOrdinary Sunday – 6^th November 2022 — Gospel: Lk 20,27-38

Different Answers on Resurrection 

Today’s Gospel introduces a new political-religious group, so far not yet spoken of in the Gospel of Luke, the Sadducees. While the Pharisees claimed the belief in the resurrection of the dead, the Sadducees argued that in the Torah (the only books of the Bible they recognized as sacred) there is no mention of this topic. Pharisees and Sadducees fiercely defended their positions on the Bible and sought reasons to oppose each other. Listening to Jesus, the Sadducees resort to a text of the Torah. They outline a curious story (vv. 28-33) and they tell it to him. It’s not the first time that the Sadducees use this strange story to embarrass their opponents. The Pharisees are convinced that eternal life is the perfection of this life. Jesus understands resurrection so radically different from the Pharisees. He is not at all touched by the objection of the Sadducees. He articulates his answer in two parts.

The first: “The sons and daughters of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those of the other world … they are like angels … they are the sons/daughters of God” (vv. 34-36). The resurrection mentioned by Jesus—the one that puts man in common with the angels of God—is completely different. For Jesus, a person lives on earth as a gestation. He prepares for a new birth after which there will be no other because the world he will enter will be final. In it there will not be any form of death.

The second part of Jesus’ answer (vv. 37-38) is made up of a clear statement of the truth of the resurrection. The evidence Jesus brings to convince the Sadducees is the following: “The Lord, the God of Abraham, God of Isaac and the God of Jacob is not God of the dead, but of the living: because all live for him.” He refers to the authority of Holy Scripture. He says that Moses, who lived many centuries after the death of the patriarchs, calls the Lord: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” This means that they were still alive, otherwise Moses and, after him, all the Israelites would have invoked a God of the dead.

How can one imagine a God who creates people, establishes a covenant with them, makes a lot of promises, defends them from their opponents, considers himself their friend and then one day abandons them, makes them disappear in the dust and return to nothing? If he behaves in this way he would be the author of the projects of death. However, Jesus says, he is not the God of the dead but of the living, for he has compassion on all because all is his and He is “a lover of life” (Wis 11:26). “He did not make death nor did he rejoice in the destruction of the living” (Wis 1:13).