Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time (November 25, 2017): Heaven our home

Thứ Sáu, 24-11-2017 | 15:02:18

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 20: 27-40)

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him, 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 ´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.” Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

Good News Reflection:

Introductory Prayer: Jesus Christ, these moments of prayer are just a shadow of the friendship that we will have forever in heaven. Strengthen my faith in your presence. Heighten my attention to your words and inspirations. Increase my total confidence in you. Make firm my love. I ask that you bless all those who join me today to pray with these meditation points, souls all over the world who are turning to you. May we one day all enjoy your presence and eternally thank you for the grace of knowing you and having you lower the heavens each day to come to us and encourage us to hasten our steps to you.

Petition: Lord, help me to put my life into perspective with an understanding of the eternal truths.

1. The coming age.Jesus Christ speaks here of the coming age of the resurrection. As the liturgical year comes to a close we reflect on the end of this world, the resurrection from the dead and life everlasting. As sure as we have bodies in this world, we have, with the grace of God, an imperishable nature. As St Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians: “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable.… For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this moral nature must put on immortality.” Meditation on the eternal truths––death, judgment, heaven and hell––is always salutary. In this first point let us reflect on our own death. It is inevitable. We are perishable and in fact, daily are we perishing. What will that moment be like? For some, it is terrible because they are headed into the unknown. For us, it should be a moment of encountering the One we have been learning to love all our lives.

2. Heaven our home.C.S. Lewis says the following about our souls in connection with heaven: “Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you––you, the individual reader…. Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold him and not another’s. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have his good way, to utter satisfaction.… Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it.” These words certainly make us reflect on being children of God. Let us in this second point of meditation enjoy the thought of this place ready and waiting for us in heaven.

3. Good company.The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the good company we will keep in heaven: “This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity – this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called ‘heaven.’” And in another place, “to live in heaven is ‘to be with Christ.’ The elect live ‘in Christ,’ but they retain, or rather find, their true identity, their own name.” Jesuit Father J. Boudreau in his book, The Happiness of Heaven, writes about the social joys of heaven. “The life of Heaven is also one of pure social joys. Among all the joys outside of the Beatific Vision, there are certainly none so sweet as those which arise from our social intercourse with the blessed.” This is what we have truly been created for. Our life in this world is brief, like a flash of lightening that shoots across the sky and although its brightness is dazzling, it is over in an instant. Our eternal life, well, it’s just that – eternal. There will be plenty of “time” for socializing.

Dialogue with Christ: Lord Jesus, does my life in any way reflect the truth of my everlasting home in heaven? Certainly, it only makes sense if it does. How quickly we can become tangled in the webs we weave in this world and lose sight of why you created us in the first place. Help me to retain this truth and make it one that shapes the way I think, the way I love and the way I act in this world so that I will merit eternal life and bring many others to the everlasting social in your presence: the banquet you have promised.

Resolution: Reinforce your knowledge of the eternal truths mentioned in this meditation by reading a few paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this subject: CCC 988-1029.

Fr. Marcial Maciel, LC

Tags: Good News Reflection, Heaven our home, Holy Gospel according to Luke., Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time