32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, C November 6, 2022
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
As many of you know, my Grandfather Jules passed away earlier this year. I’m grateful for all the prayers you’ve offered for him and my family. One thing I could always count on when visiting my grandfather was that he would get on some rant or other about the Catholic faith and what Catholics need to learn or do… a trait you may find familiar…
Anyway, one of the stories he told me (more than once) involved a close friend of his whom we’ll call “Mike.” Mike was a lifelong Catholic who went to Mass every Saturday at 4pm. In the conversations they would have at lunch, my grandfather would often bring up the subject of death and judgment to try to get Mike to take his faith more seriously. On one such occasion, Jules was talking about eternal life and how we’d all get our bodies back in heaven. Mike responded, “no we don’t, the body dies and goes away.”
Right away, Jules quipped back, “yes we do, that’s what Catholics believe.” After a little back and forth, my grandfather asked Mike to say the creed with him right there. They got to the end where it says “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead,” and Mike sat back and went, “huh, I guess we do get our bodies back.”
This man, who was more than 80 years old at this point, attended Mass and said the creed almost every weekend of his life, but he didn’t realize that he was supposed to believe in the resurrection of the dead. How many other Catholics do you think have made the same mistake? Going their whole lives saying one thing with their lips on Sunday, but thinking something else in their hearts all along? I’d wager quite a few.
And disbelief in the resurrection is not a new problem. Jesus is shown here battling with the Sadducees about this very topic. The Sadducees were a group of Jews who only believed in the first 5 books of the bible – the Pentateuch – and they claimed that nothing in those books proved the resurrection. So, they come to Jesus and cook up this rather ridiculous hypothetical scenario to try to make the point that the resurrection would cause too many problems. Jesus is having none of it. In Mark and Matthew’s versions of this same story, he flat out calls them ignorant of scripture. In Luke’s version, he does something very similar to what Jules did and points to a phrase they all knew very well and had read and said many times before: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Though dead, these men are alive to God, thus the resurrection is real. This reduces them to silence.
Just because you read it, just because you know the words, just because you are familiar with something doesn’t mean you really believe it. It doesn’t mean you understand it either. Familiarity might make it worse. I think a lot of people tune out when I say “let us pray.” Could you tell me the gist of what I said after that in the opening prayer? Honestly, sometimes I couldn’t tell you and I’m the one who prayed it!
But those words matter! They are the collective prayer of the entire Church to God. They are meant to express the very essence of what it means to be a Church that prays in union with God and one another. The ancient creed that we say every weekend is even more so an expression of that mystical union of the Church with Christ, the source of truth. St. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians today says “The Lord… will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one” and “We are confident of you in the Lord that what we instruct you, you are doing and will continue to do.” This is the meaning of tradition, of continuing to do what our ancestors did because it is still true and it strengthens us.
But if we tune it out, if we go on autopilot, are we really “doing” what we’re instructed to do? If we are capable of going months, years, even decades simply glossing over the truth contained in tradition, are we really disposed to have the Lord strengthen us as St. Paul promises?
What is the solution? Should I improvise more? Add some dynamic changes each Mass to the prayers, do tricks in the pulpit? No. The reality is that conformity to what is given is required for maturity. No amount of creativity in worship will last. No amount of charisma and excitement in preaching will make up for what you need most: maturity. It is often a battle to pay attention to the prayers week after week, especially the ones that don’t change like the Creed, the Eucharistic Prayer, and the Our Father. But we have to fight it if we want to be strengthened in our faith, if we want the maturity that brings real peace.
This is especially important as we enter into this unique time of year with its focus on praying for the dead and preparing for our own deaths. Death terrifies people. The world doesn’t want to deal with it. Part of what’s best about Halloween is facing death and seeing that we need not fear it… we can even mock it. But the world immediately moves onto Christmas. Not the Church! Not authentic Christians! The readings at Mass have already turned apocalyptic and the themes of judgment and the end of the world are going to loom large until halfway through Advent. We’re going to linger on the subject of mortality. Then and only then are we properly disposed to receive what Christmas is really about. It is precisely how we see death that should set us apart. It is through our understanding of death that God gives us strength.
Think about what the Creed says, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead.” We are anticipating death and preparing for it because we know the resurrection is coming. When Jesus rebukes the Sadducees, he doesn’t just defend the resurrection of the dead, he reveals something more, something that should excite us. Yes, we get our bodies back – bodies that never age, get sick, or die – but we also get a higher form of love. This new, resurrected love is so direct, so powerful, that even the greatest human love on earth – that of man and wife – simply fades away like a candle in sunlight. Marriage doesn’t exist in heaven because it is replaced by God himself, a love beyond comprehension.
But we can anticipate it. We can contemplate it, become open to it, experience foretastes of it. How? By honestly preparing for our own deaths through conversion. By growing in the maturity that leans into ancient faith that is yet always new. By following the Church rather than the world. By falling back in love with Jesus Christ, the firstborn of the dead and the promise of eternal life.