[Pearls Episode 144: Preparing for Sunday.]
November is here – the Month of Holy Souls. A time to pray for our faithful departed – that they are fully reunited with our Lord in Heaven. It is also a time to bring to mind the “big sleep” that awaits all of us – Memento Mori. But the tradition of the Church is much different than the morbid or sullen Hollywood take on things, but rather as a healthy dose of reality to make sure we’re keeping our eye on the prize – getting to Heaven.
On a side note we often find ourselves repeating that a parent’s role is to get their kids to Heaven, not harvard. Of course these days, we wouldn’t wish harvard on anyone, woke as it is. It strains the imagination that until recently harvard’s motto read, “Truth for Christ and the Church.” Now the motto is “Truth for whatever you want it to be” or something like that…
This Sunday’s scripture readings are right in the apocalyptic spirit:
- The first reading from 2nd Maccabees brings the execution of the seven brothers – who willingly give up their lives for the promise of heaven.
- The Psalm response has echoes of Christ’s second coming with “Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.”
- The second reading is from St. Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians – wherein he discusses tribulations and even the appearance of the mysterious “man of lawlessness” that will precede Christ’s second coming.
- And in the Gospel reading Jesus turns our attention to heaven, with the question of whether there is marriage in heaven.
This focus on the end times brings to mind a number of recent spiritual movements and revelations – such as the tribulation, warning, chastisement, illumination of conscience, era of peace and on and on.
In this week’s Pearls of the Interior Life – which will go out tomorrow – and follow-up messages, we take a high level view at what these are, how they fit together, where they come from, what the Church has to say about them, and, most importantly – practical take aways for our interior life and our life in the world.
Blessings on your journey with Christ –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Readings for Sunday
Reading 1: 2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14
It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king, to force them to eat pork in violation of God’s law. One of the brothers, speaking for the others, said: “What do you expect to achieve by questioning us?
We are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors.”
At the point of death he said: “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever. It is for his laws that we are dying.”
After him the third suffered their cruel sport. He put out his tongue at once when told to do so, and bravely held out his hands, as he spoke these noble words: “It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again.” Even the king and his attendants marveled at the young man’s courage, because he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
After he had died, they tortured and maltreated the fourth brother in the same way. When he was near death, he said, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 17:1, 5-6, 8, 15
- (15b) Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Hear, O LORD, a just suit; attend to my outcry;
hearken to my prayer from lips without deceit.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
My steps have been steadfast in your paths, my feet have not faltered.
I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me; hear my word.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Keep me as the apple of your eye, hide me in the shadow of your wings.
But I in justice shall behold your face; on waking I shall be content in your presence.
R. Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full.
Reading 2: 2 Thes 2:16-3:5
Brothers and sisters: May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.
Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us, so that the word of the Lord may speed forward and be glorified, as it did among you, and that we may be delivered from perverse and wicked people, for not all have faith. But the Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. We are confident of you in the Lord that what we instruct you, you are doing and will continue to do. May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.
Gospel: Lk 20:27-38
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers;
the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called out ‘Lord,’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”