Wednesday, June 03, 2020 - Ninth week of Ordinary Time - Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Mark 12, 18-27 - I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. Whoever believes in me will never die.
This time it's the Sadducees' turn to appear before Jesus. They don't believe in the resurrection. It is with the Word of God that they persuade Jesus about marriage. They know the Law of Moses well because they were Jewish. The question is: who will be the husband of the woman, after the resurrection, among the seven men who married her successively here below? This is a trick question from people who do not believe in the resurrection. There is already a message for us: there is no point in debating differences of belief at the risk of seeing one's faith shaken.
What is Jesus' response? He says, "Are you not going astray, not knowing the Scriptures and the power of God? When you rise from the dead, you take neither wife nor husband,
but we are like the angels in heaven (praising God eternally)". This means that when we study the Scriptures, let us be careful: let us not fall into fundamentalism or relativism.
Jesus continued the explanation of the resurrection because this is the main issue here, marriage is only an argument. For the Sadducees, when the body dies, the soul dies too; Jesus explained that although the body dies, the spirit lives forever. In other words, if we live without taking care of the soul (living according to our will, without praying, without caring about others...), this last sentence of Jesus applies to us: "Are you not going astray".
So let us never be like the Sadducees, not believing in the resurrection. In our profession of faith, we always say: "I await the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come". Let it not be a simple, well-rehearsed rehearsal. In our actions, in our customs, in our words and deeds, let us keep in mind that we will resurrect. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n°998) says "All men who have died: those who have done good will rise again for life, those who have done evil, for damnation" (Jn 5, 29).
