Thirty Second Sunday of Ordinary time
If you like me are fascinated with history especially the Tudor times you may have come across those brave men and women who stood up for their faith and paid the ultimate price: martyrdom. They ran the risk often of being discovered often moving from place to place and living in disgusting conditions. We meet in the first reading today a group of brothers who were martyred for their faith in the resurrection and this is at the heart of the readings today which is to be Children of the resurrection.
Often in the Gospel we come across many different groups who oppose Jesus and ask awkward questions. We come across a group today called the Sadducess. This group formed in about the time the first reading was written they were a group who accepted Roman rule but only to get where they wanted to get too. Religiously they were very conservative. They had no believe in the Resurrection of the dead instead all people, good and bad, went to the shadowy world of Sheol which was the Jewish idea of the place of the dead.
For us the readings expose us to the question of what happens to us when we die. It is something that we all share and no one in immune from this experience. But, we know from History that many cultures have not seen Death as an end in itself although the world may give that impression.
But what we learn today from the readings is that the resurrection as a lived experience is a matter of faith. It is an encounter with “God our father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace.”
What the Sadduecess did not realise is that proof in the resurrection is that true faith and witnesses to the resurrection does not account for elaborate scholarship or great arguments for faith in the resurrection is a lived experience. It is a simple faith said with utter conviction St Therese of Lisieux at the hour of her death said “I am not dying, I am beginning to live.” As we read in the preface of the dead “Lord for your faithful people life is changed, not ended. When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death we gain everlasting dwelling place in heaven.”
The word Martyr comes from the word to be witnesses. We are not called in this country to be martyrs in the true sense of the word but we are called to be witnesses of the resurrection to the world. Our fight is not with the King or the Queen but with a different power just as strong willed and that is with indifferentism a death being a taboo subject for the world in which we live. We need to be people of faith and witnesses to the resurrection by our love for our Lord and our brothers and sisters who find it hard to believe.
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