Homily for the week of November 7, 2010

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2010 C

2 Maccabee 7:1-2, 9-14

Psalm 17

2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5

Luke 20:27-38

A small boy asked his father: Dad, what will happen to you when you die? Oh, that's easy to answer, came the confident reply. "I just go out like a light." There was a moment's silence while this was digested. Then came the second question: But Dad, what if there is someone waiting to switch you on again?

People in the United States have mixed feelings about death. On one hand, we spend lots of time and money trying hold off the moment of death. We add safety features to cars and homes, go on the latest diet or exercise craze, and take life-enhancing herbal supplements -- all with the hope of starving off death a few more years. On the other hand, movies and television often feature violent death to attract viewers. Death seems to fascinate us --as long as it's someone else's death.

Most teens and most adults would rather not think too much about their own death. This usually isn't hard to do, because most people in our country rarely have to address the reality of death. Yet everyone once in a while we have to face the death of someone we know well. Or maybe have to face the possibility of our own death because of an accident or a serious illness. At time our minds race with the thought: what will happen to me when I die?

Facing our own death isn't easy. It can be sobering, even frightening to face the big unknown. Some people are thrown into despair and even depression thinking about death. Our Catholic faith has answers to the question of death, as do most religions. But we have the advantage because the person who supplied those answers has actually died and risen again. Believing in Jesus' promise that we will rise to a new life does not completely take away the sting of death, but our faith does help us understand that death is not a final ending but a new beginning.

This past Tuesday we celebrated our belief that the souls of the faithful departed are in God’s merciful presence. Is death simply the end, like putting out a light or snuffing out a candle. If there is life after death, what is it like? We have all asked questions like these. It is right to consider them on this November weekend, when the natural world of vegetation has died, and as we remember Veterans Day. It is good to hear the words of Jesus about life after death.

All our Bible readings today have a forward look. They describe a today out of which a future flows. Because it is our present faith in God that ensures our enduring life.

There is within the human spirit a will to live—not only our earthly life, but beyond it. Most people want to be remembered for having made a difference in the world during their lifetime, no matter how long that life will be. Sometimes we muse about what we would want on our tombstone. For what do we most want to be remembered? For people in Jesus’ day, it was important to leave their mark in the world through the children they left behind.

The notion of resurrected life only began to emerge some 200 years before Jesus. Ideas varied about what it would be like. In the first reading today, we see the belief expressed that only the just would be raised, not the wicked. In other texts we find the notion that both would be raised, the former for eternal reward, the latter for everlasting punishment.

By Jesus’ time, there were two large sects within Judaism: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Pharisees had come to believe in a resurrection of the body. Jesus told them that life after death is not the same as life on earth. What Jesus promised is that life with God is the very thing for which we are born; therefore, it will be a happiness we cannot imagine. We can no longer die for we will be like angels.

Jesus replied that there was no need to think about heirs. The dead will be children of God. Marriage to preserve a name will have no place. Life after death is not an extension of life on earth, but a radical renewal of life that knows no more death.

There is an ancient play called EVERYMAN. In it God sends Death to the hero to tell him that his life is over. When the hero recovers from shock, he asks Death to give him a few minutes to invite his friends who are Money, Fame, Power, and Good Works to go with him into the after life. Death agrees. To the hero's dismay, however, the only person who accepts his invitation is Good Works. The rest refuse. The point is that as we pass through death from this life to the next, one thing alone will matter-- our Good Works.

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist has interviewed hundreds of people who have been declared clinically dead and then revived. These people commonly report experiencing a kind of instant replay of their lives. Many have told her that when it comes to this point only two things are relevant: the service they gave to others, and love. All those things we think are important, like fame, money, prestige, and power are not at all important.

Our religion teaches us that death is not an end to life, but the passage to a new life that will have no end. In Baptism we began a relationship with Divine Love. Love does not end, nor do loving relationships die. They may change, but they continue.

Our Catholic faith teaches that there are three distinct modes of existence in the next life, and we identify these places as heaven, purgatory and hell. Where we go after death is very much our choice. No one is predestined to heaven or to hell. God is a loving God and acts to save everyone. But some choose not to be saved and to reject God. Hell is the inheritance of all who wilfully turn away from divine love through what is known as mortal or deadly choices for which we have not asked forgiveness. Hopefully, our choices take us in the direction of God. Usually we will know that we have made the wrong choice if we feel uneasy, bored, selfish, restless. But we will know that we have made the right choice if we feel good about it: if we experience, joy, peacefulness, harmony, love, patience, kindness, faith, generosity. While on earth Jesus is with us regardless of our choices. We make the right choices through his help. If we make the wrong choices he holds out his hands to forgive us.