Sunday Homilies by Fr. Rudolf V. D’ Souza

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32^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
November 11, 2007 Year: C
2 Mac 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thes 2:16-3:5; Lk 20:27-38

God of the Living

Refer also to homily of 8^th April 2007
Easter Sunday Homily

First Reading...
“It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine’s flesh. One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, ‘What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.’

And when he was at his last breath, he said, ‘You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life because we have died for his laws.’

After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said nobly, ‘I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.’

As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man’s spirit, for he regarded his sufferings s nothing. After he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way. When he was near death, he said, ‘One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!’” [2 Mac. 7:1-2, 9-14] 

Second Reading...
“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.

Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may spread rapidly and be glorified everywhere, just as it is among you, and that we may be rescued from wicked and evil people; for not all have faith.

But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. And we have confidence in the Lord concerning you, that you are doing and will go on doing the things that we command. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.” [2 Thess. 2:16-3:5] 

Gospel Reading...
“Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’

Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to his age marry and are given to marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” [Lk. 20:27-38]

There was a woman who had been diagnosed with cancer and had been given 3 months to live. Her Dr. told her to start making preparations to die. So she contacted her pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what she wanted to be wearing.

The woman also told her pastor that she wanted to be buried with her favorite bible. Everything was in order and the pastor was preparing to leave when the woman suddenly remembered something very important to her.

"There's one more thing" she said excitedly. "What's that?" came the pastor's reply. "This is very important." The woman continued. "I want to be buried with a fork in my right hand." The pastor stood looking at the woman not knowing quite what to say. "That shocks you doesn't it?" the woman asked. "Well to be honest, I'm puzzled by the request" said the pastor.

The woman explained. "In all my years of attending church socials and functions where food was involved (and let's be honest, food is an important part of any church event; spiritual or otherwise); my favorite was when whoever was clearing away the dishes of the main course would lean over and say "you can keep your fork."

It was my favorite part because I knew that something better was coming. When they told me to keep my fork I knew that something great was about to be given to me. It wasn't Jell-O or pudding. It was cake or pie. Something with substance.

So I just want people to see me there in that casket with a fork in my hand and I want them to wonder "What's with the fork?" Then I want you to tell them, "Something better is coming so keep your fork too."

The pastor's eyes were welled up with tears of joy as he hugged the woman goodbye. He knew this would be one of the last times he would see her before her death. But he also knew that the woman had a better grasp of heaven than he did. She KNEW that something better was coming.

At the funeral people were walking by the woman's casket and they saw the pretty dress she was wearing and her favorite bible and the fork placed in her right hand. Over and over the pastor heard the question "What's with the fork?" And over and over he smiled.

During his message the pastor told the people of the conversation he had with the woman shortly before she died. He also told them about the fork and about what it symbolized to her. The pastor told the people how he could not stop thinking about the fork and told them that they probably would not be able to stop thinking about it either.

He was right. So the next time you reach down for your fork, let it remind you oh so gently that there is something better coming.

For “He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” [Lk. 20:38] 

Saint Paul says: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being’; the last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.” [1 Cor. 15:42-7]

“For we are the temple of the living God; as God said: ‘I will live in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’” [2 Cor. 6:16; Lev. 26:12; Ezek. 37:27] 

Atheist Bertrand Russell wrote in 1925, “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my own ego will survive.” Well, that’s cheerful. Russell clearly bordered on the morose, but we’ve all wondered, with perhaps more optimism, what will happen to us when we die.

If life after death is not an option, then Russell is right; our bodies will rot and nothing else of us will survive. No consciousness. No happiness. No hope. And, several decades of existentialist window dressing aside, what that really means is an accidental world with no ultimate meaning.

What makes Jesus unique among religious leaders and among great leaders in general, is his relationship with death. Leaders have met with all manner of untimely deaths—assassination, self-inflicted death, accidental death before the world was ready for them to go. But death sought and found them nonetheless. What is not unique about Jesus is that his enemies killed him; what is unprecedented, if the Gospels are to be believed, is that he foretold how and when it would happen and resigned himself to it (actually chose it), stating that death had no power over him.

Theologian R. C. Sproul has stated, “The claim of resurrection is vital to Christianity. If Christ has been raised from the dead by God, then He has the credentials and certification that no other religious leader possesses. Buddha is dead. Mohammad is dead. Moses is dead. Confucius is dead. But, according to … Christianity, Christ is alive.”

So different and so abnormal is all this that a part of us would like to dismiss it as myth. But is the resurrection to be relegated to a Sunday school story—or is there evidence?

Researcher Josh McDowell said, “After more than seven hundred hours of studying this subject and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, OR it is the most fantastic fact of history.” Right. So which is it? 

Besides the authoritative rejection of the foregoing view, we may submit the following three considerations which render it untenable: First, the contention that the Resurrection of Christ cannot be proved historically is not in accord with science. Science does not know enough about the limitations and the properties of a body raised from the dead to immortal life to warrant the assertion that such a body cannot be perceived by the senses; again in the case of Christ, the empty sepulcher with all its concrete circumstances cannot be explained except by a miraculous Divine intervention as supernatural in its character as the Resurrection of Jesus. Secondly, history does not allow us to regard the belief in the Resurrection as the result of a gradual evolution in Christian consciousness. The apparitions were not a mere projection of the disciples’ Messianic hope and expectation; their Messianic hope and expectations had to be revived by the apparitions. Again, the Apostles did not begin with preaching the immortal life of Christ with God, but they preached Christ’s Resurrection from the very beginning, they insisted on it as a fundamental fact and they described even some of the details connected with this fact: Acts, ii, 24, 31; iii, 15,26; iv, 10; v, 30; x, 39-40; xiii, 30, 37; xvii, 31-2; Rom., i,4; iv, 25; vi, 4,9; viii, 11, 34; x, 7; xiv, 9; I Cor., xv, 4, 13 sqq.; etc. Thirdly, the denial of the historical certainty of Christ’s Resurrection involves several historical blunders: it questions the objective reality of the apparitions without any historical grounds for such a doubt; it denies the fact of the empty sepulcher in spite of solid historical evidence to the contrary; it questions even the fact of Christ’s burial in Joseph’s sepulcher, though this fact is based on the clear and simply unimpeachable testimony of history.

Conclusion:

• Resurrection is what supports our daily activity.

• Resurrection is what gives us hope in despair

• Resurrection makes us people of joy and expectation

• Resurrection leads us to accept our failures, sufferings and challenges

• Resurrection is the fact that cannot be explained, rather must be experienced in our being

• Hence, let us proclaim Jesus’ resurrection through our life

The Fork of the old lady is a signifying attitude on her part to show that the good things are yet to come. We need this conviction so that we are always filled with hope and love. AMEN. 

"And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (Matthew 27:52,53).

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