Luke 20:27 - 38
The other day I was visiting a 97 year
old lady. She had been raised a Catholic, had raised her children
Catholic, had been married in a Catholic ceremony to a good Catholic
man, according to her, anyway. After he passed away, she continued
to participate in the life of her parish, attending Mass and
frequenting the sacraments. Until she developed cancer. She seems
to have lost her faith for a while about that time. She told me
that she talked to Jesus all the time, but she wasn't sure anyone was
listening. The bottom line, though, was that she was at peace. All
she wanted was to slip peacefully away without too much pain. And
she didn't know what the next world would bring – whether she would
be nothing, whether she would find herself in a life after death,
whether she would be reincarnated – but she was absolutely
convinced that God would take care of her, that God was concerned
about her.
Today the Church calls our attention
to life after death, first in the story of the seven sons who are all
executed for clinging to their religion; and then with the story of
Jesus' confrontation with the Sadducees and the story of the woman
with seven husbands. The seven sons all expressed, in different
ways, that they expected to have everything they would lose in their
martyrdom restored because they had been faithful to the covenant.
On the other hand, the poor woman who had been married to seven
brothers was probably hoping that in heaven she would not belong to
anybody.
When we first heard about heaven as
little children, I think we all dreamed of a place where life would
be very much like it was, except we wouldn't be sent to bed when
things were just getting interesting, and if you saw a toy you knew
you needed, you would get it. It would be a place where you could
spend a lot more time with your favorite cousin. You could have a
slice of your mother's apple pie whenever you wanted, instead of
waiting around. Christmas would come more often. You could fly and
have super-strength.
As time went on, many of us leave this
idea behind – we realize that having things doesn't really make
you happy, and our idea of heaven becomes more abstract, perhaps a
state of existence in which we enjoy the beatific vision. Now I
don't know about you, but the idea of staring at God for all eternity
didn't excite my teenage soul very much. In fact, every conceivable
vision of heaven falls short; we are left with what various
philosophers and theologians have said in different ways; there is
something in me that is never satisfied, never content, and heaven
will be when that hunger or thirst is finally satisfied. Our hearts
are restless, Augustine said, until they rest in thee, O God.
It's pretty obvious that the Sadducees
wanted to trip Jesus up. They gave him the example hoping he would
have to admit how absurd the whole idea of a life after death was.
Whose wife would she be in the next life? Because she is defined by
being the wife of someone. But Jesus does not take the bait. He
says in effect that life after death is a reality, but not one we
would be able to recognize. He compared those blessed souls to
angels, but what did we know about angels, other than they don't get
married? And we only know this because he told us.
Maybe some of the Sadducees were
genuinely curious; maybe they wanted to see what Jesus had to say.
Maybe they were sort of open to the idea that there might be life
after death. But Jesus can't give them a satisfactory answer. He
makes it clear throughout the gospels that if you want what he
promises, you have to take up your cross, you have to develop a
relationship with Him, you have to become his disciple. And the
Sadducees wanted to know the answers without walking the walk,
without making a commitment.
I think that's were studying the lives
of the saints and martyrs helps. The Church assures us that they are
in heaven; but it is because they chose to live like Christ, they
chose to imitate his life, to become one with him. Because God will
not raise up you and I, he will raise up the part of you and I that
has become Christ, that has identified with Jesus, the part of us
that he wants preserved for all eternity – his true son or
daughter.
The monk Thomas Merton was asked if he
really believed he would live forever. He answered that he was sure
something of ourselves would survive after death, but we will
probably be surprised by what this will be.
We Catholics believe in second
chances. We believe that God will not turn us away if we die still
hanging on to earthly things. But we cannot enter into the heavenly
realm unless we have become Christ, and that becoming is what
purgatory is all about. On the threshold of heaven we will see
clearly what is keeping us from becoming one with God, and we will
have the ultimate choice – to abandon what is keeping us from
entering heaven, or to cling to what we loved on earth. And we will
be given what we choose at that moment. And if we want to spend
eternity with wealth, with power, with being famous, with pleasure,
maybe we will have it – but we won't be happy. It's like the
golfer who died and found himself on a perfect golf course. And
every time he hit the ball, he would make a hole in one. Finally he
said, “if this is heaven, send me to the other place!” And the
answer came back, “you are already there.” We will come to
realize that all the things which consumes our time and energy now
are nothing compared to being one with God, and that lost possibility
will be worse than swimming in a lake of fire.
A little girl had a plastic necklace
that she treasured. It was shiny and made up of beads of different
colors. Her father came to her one day and asked if he could have
the necklace. “no” she said. Every day, he would come back and
ask for the necklace. And she would say “no”. Finally she gave
in and with tears handed him her treasure. And that was when he gave
her a beautiful necklace made of gold and precious stones.
The Father wants us for his own. He
wants us to choose him over all the other things we can put at the
center of our lives. Not easy, but certainly possible. That's why
we have saints, to show us how.
