A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew(22:23-33)
Some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection; and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.” Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother. The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. Last of all, the woman herself died. In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.’
Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels*in heaven.
And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.’ And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.
From a sermon by St. John Henry Newman
God spoke to Moses in the burning bush. In speaking God identified himself as “the God of Abraham”. Christ tells us that this simple announcement contained the promise that Abraham should rise again from the dead. In truth, if we may say it with reverence, the all-wise and all-knowing God cannot speak without meaning multiple things all at once. God sees the end and the beginning; God understand the numberless connections and relations of all things with one another.
When God called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob God implied that those holy patriarchs were still alive, though they were no longer seen on earth. This may seem evident at first sight, though one may still ask whether the saying proves that their bodies would live; for if their souls were still living that would be enough to account for their being still called in the Book of Exodus servants of God. We are apt to talk about our bodies as if we knew how or what they really are.
Actually, we only know what our eyes tell us. Our bodies seem to grow, to come to maturity, to decay; but after all we know no more about them than our senses tell us. We have no direct knowledge of what may be called the substantive existence of the body but only of what we call its accidents.
Again, we are apt to speak of soul and body, as if we could distinguish between them and knew much about them. But for the most part we use these words without meaning. It is useful to make the distinction and scripture makes it. But after all, the Gospel speaks of our nature, in a religious sense, as one reality. Soul and body make up one human being. This being is born once but never dies. Philosophers of old time thought the soul indeed might live for ever, but that the body perished at death. Yet Christ tells us otherwise.
Now look at Christ’s words much as you look at God the Father’s words. He means many things, not all of them clear to us, when he seems to say only one thing. Whatever he says is fruitful in multiple meanings and refers to many things. It is well to keep this in mind when we read Scripture. Christ tells us that the body will live for ever. In the text he seems to imply that it never really dies, that we lose sight indeed of what we are accustomed to see, but that God still sees the elements we are made of all together even if they aren’t seen by our senses.
Our Blessed Lord seems to tell us that in some sense or other Abraham’s body might be considered still alive, as a pledge of his resurrection perhaps. Though it was dead in the common sense in which we use this word, Abraham shall rise from the dead because in truth he is still alive. He cannot in the end be held under the power of the grave, any more than a sleeping person can be kept from waking. Abraham is still alive in the dust, though not risen from it yet. He is alive because all God’s saints live to him, though they seem to perish.
God graciously called himself the “God of Abraham”. He did not say the God of Abraham’s soul but simply “of Abraham”. He blessed Abraham, and he gave him eternal life—not only to his soul without the body but to Abraham as to an integral human being. We believe God’s word even if we don’t know how to translate it into our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking. Believing is not the same as understanding or knowing how to explain what God has shown us. That is part of the darkness that surrounds our faith and leads us to trust in our God.
Musical Selection
Prayer
O God,
glory of believers and life of the just,
by the death and resurrection of your Son, we are redeemed:
have mercy on your servants
and make them worthy to share the joys of paradise,
for they believed in the resurrection of the dead.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,