“Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came 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 at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?’
“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, . . . they are the children of God. . .. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out” Lord,” the God of Abraham,.. is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.’” Luke 20:27-38
Are we too often like these Sadducees, asking Jesus about complex things in an attempt to sideline what are the more life-centered and life-changing issues? Should we be asking questions like: Jesus, who is the Father? Who are You? Who did You create me to be? And where in my life journey could I or should I be right now?
THE BURNING BUSHES
At the end of this Gospel passage Jesus mentions the burning bush Hmmm! Are our present-day autumn leaves a reminder of the flaming bush where Moses heard God say, “I am Who AM.”?
The autumn leaves don’t really “fall” from the tree limbs; they are pushed away!
Like that burning bush, not consumed by the burning, the trees losing their leaves right now and, yet the tree is not dying is like the burning bush. Do you know that the leaves don’t fall off, but are pushed off by a tree-produced substance? (See Why Do Leaves Fall in Autumn at Britannica. com) Perhaps this should be just one more of the many signs or calls from God, hoping that we will discover and respond in self-forgetting love.
We, more than the trees, were created with powers with which to learn and choose. How many more clues about God and the meaning of our lives is God giving us during this lifelong treasure hunt?
DISCERNING AND CHOOSING RIGHTLY: USE IT OR LOSE IT
Trees automatically do what their Creator “programed” them to do. We, at least, bodily, respond to programming, too, but there is more to us. We each have an intellect and a free will and that gives us a part to play in what we are now and who we are going to be in the future.
What are we doing with our time here on earth? Let’s ask better questions of Jesus: Is God here? Did You come so that I “may have life”? Did you really mean it when you said,” I will not leave you orphans”?
Could God do this? Would God do this? Why would God do this? Do I believe it?
Are we standing before Jesus, the God-become-man, and asking the right questions?
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A TIP FROM ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
“It was necessary for man’s salvation that there should be a teaching revealed by God beyond the philosophical disciplines which are investigated human reason.” Why? “Because the human being is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1.1.1.
BISHOP ROBERT BARRON’S EXPLANATION OF SUMMA THEOLOGIAE 1.1.1.
“We require a science (theology) beyond the philosophical and natural sciences precisely because we human beings are oriented to an end that surpasses our powers of rational comprehension. We are destined to be united to a power that is beyond whatever the eye can see or the mind can know, beyond the world in all of its richness, beyond the web of contingent things. Here in some of the first lines of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica we see the theme of ecstasy and self-transcendence, a motif that is repeated through Thomas’s work: human beings are made to go beyond themselves, their end or purpose is to surrender themselves to a transcendent power” Bishop Robert Barron, Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, Word on Fire Academic, 2022, page 16.
That surrender “to transcendent power” is “to God.” How far along is each of us in that surrender? How much help are we giving and looking for in the people and the world around us?
Sister Loretta
