God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

From the Gospel according to Luke
Lc 20:27-40
 
At that time, some Sadducees—those who say there is no resurrection—approached Jesus and questioned him: «Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the brother should marry the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married and died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and in the same way all seven died without leaving children. Finally, the woman also died. At the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For all seven had her as wife.»
Jesus said to them, «The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And as for the dead being raised, Moses himself indicated it in the passage about the bush, when he speaks of the Lord as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God is not of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.»
Then some of the scribes said, «Teacher, you have spoken well.» And they no longer dared to ask him any question.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Resurrection

Luigi Maria Epicoco

Jesus dismantles the thesis of the Sadducees’ story, who, by presenting the case of a woman married to seven brothers and seeing them die one by one, would find herself, according to them, in the contradiction of not knowing whose she would be when all rise again. But that woman is not an object, and no one can possess her, especially not in the logic of the kingdom of God, which is a logic of structural and radical freedom.

«The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of the coming age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.»

But this cannot be understood unless one opens and does not close their mind. If there is **one point upon which our faith stands or falls, that point is the resurrection.** Already in Jesus’ time, there was a clear separation between those who believed in it and those who did not. However, it must also be said that even among those who believe in it today, some have developed a wrong idea, confusing the resurrection with some form of reincarnation or the revitalization of a corpse. The resurrection is a fact that escapes being described in its totality. Certainly, however, we know that it is the **gift of a concrete life, in a concrete body, but liberated from the dictatorship of sin and death.** No one can explain this mystery because, like all mysteries, one can at best experience it. Certainly, however, one cannot understand anything about the resurrection if it is conceived as the same life that exists here. A seed has a life, but when it dies (sprouts), it becomes a tree, which is also life; it is life that comes from the seed, but no one would dream of saying it is the same as before, since it is instead radically different. Likewise, to think of the resurrection with the same logics of possession and limitation with which we live life here would mean understanding nothing of the life granted in the resurrection.

fonte © nellaparola.it

Let us listen together

Per gentile concessione © ♥ Padre Gaetano Piccolo SJ