By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
Reward, Reconciliation & Realisation
November 10, 2019: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 -3:5; Luke 20: 27-38
“And I will raise them up on the last day” declared Jesus regarding those who partook of him. Resurrection is our hope, Resurrection is the foundation of our faith. The crux of the salvation that Jesus offers us is Hope, and hope is the confidence of things that we are yet to receive and the greatest of all that we look forward to is resurrection! This is what Jesus in his incarnate self showed us – he lived his life for God, he died for God and by God he was raised; when we live, we live for God; if we die, we die for God, and we will be risen in the Lord! This is the foundation of our faith; for as St.Paul says, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor 15:17). The readings today, help us understand what resurrection could mean to us.
Resurrection is a REWARD, a recompense that God sets before us for the commitment with which we live our life. We come from God, and it is our destiny that we return to God. We are loved into existence by God and we bear God’s image in the core of our being. Every day of our life is an opportunity to cherish that image within us and bring it to fulfillment within us. Every person we come across is a companion on this journey and every situation we live through is a means to nudge towards the destiny.
There could be moments that are trying and those are moments to stride across, as we see in the first reading. When we find ourselves in such moments as those, when we have to choose between God and godlessness, between righteousness and injustice, between good and mediocrity – and we decide to choose God, righteousness, goodness – we can proudly say with St. Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on, there is reserved for me the crown”(2 Tim 4:7,8).
Resurrection is RECONCILIATION, a reunion with my creator, an experience of my oneness with my God, whose child I am. In the letter to the Colossians, we are told, “you have now been reconciled in the body of his flesh, so as to present you holy and blameless before God provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in faith”(Col 1:22,23).
Haven’t we heard sometimes people making remarks such as, ‘after all, would we live another 25 years!’ Absolutely true, that we are on an earthly sojourn and our eternal abode beckons us. That is why St. Paul prays in the second reading today, ‘May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.’ It is in that love of God and the faithfulness of Christ, that we are assured of ‘eternal life’ which is participating in the nature of God, who alone is eternal. In our resurrection we become one with God, we are reconciled to God, and we become eternal like God!
Resurrection is REALISATION, a concrete experience of what has been promised. We are called to live as the people of Resurrection. Christians are Easter People… while there is in store the eternal life that has been promised, we are invited to live that resurrection every day, every moment, specially in those moments when we are prone to hopelessness and desperation.
We need to realise who we are, we need to realise who our God is! Jesus says of us – “they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection” (Lk 20:35). As Paul explains to the Romans (ch.6), we have died with Christ, in his crucifiction and we will live with him! We are called to live our lives, as people of resurrection, not losing heart on any trial, not giving up at any temptation, not desperate with any failure, not bogged down by any evil – but people filled with hope, comfort, courage, steadfastness, strength and love of God.
We are people of Resurrection; let us live our lives mindful of the reward that the Lord has set before us, preserve ourselves holy and blameless to be reconciled to the Lord in eternal life and realise the fruits of that resurrection right here and now, in our daily lives.