A glimpse of the resurrection

Today’s Gospel reading is on questions on the Resurrection. Since time immemorial, human kind always regarded death as some kind of passage into the unknown where the Gods dwell. In ancient Egypt, the Pharaohs prepared their lavish tombs either in majestic pyramids or in secret underground tombs (to ward off robbers) because they believed that the souls of their dead would carry on to the next life, bringing along the riches they have gathered in their lifetime. Hence death is very much a part of their daily life.

Today because modern man has created super weapons to kill one another by the hundreds of thousands, death seems to happen everywhere, whether it is an extra-judicial killing in the streets of Cebu or a hundred people killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq. So many people die so quickly no one even has the time to think where their souls will be headed.

So for this Sunday, Our Lord Jesus Christ gives us an insight of what happens at the Resurrection. You can read this story on Luke 20: 27-38.

27 Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to [Jesus], 28 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.’

29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. 30 Then the second 31 and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 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; 35 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. 36 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.37

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; 38 and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Of all the teachings about the resurrection, this story is the clearest to us that if by any chance we die today, we know that there is life after death. If you are an armchair historian like me, you can read about the great people or rulers who once roamed the earth, some holy men and women, while the others did the most foul and despicable things to their peoples during their violent rule. Those people that we read about have long been gone, but in the eyes of God they are not dead, they are alive. So it is a matter of finding out where these people are spending their life eternal? Are they basking on God’s glory or are they in that hot, stank and dark place where there is grinding of teeth called by Jesus as Gehenna or hell?

The whole trouble about God’s giving humankind his free will is that, anyone can accept the teachings handed down by the Holy Books, either the Bible or the Koran or even chant holy Tibetan incantations like the Mantra of Avalokiteshvara. But the bottom line is, whether we have been living a holy life and have helped the poor. When Jesus taught us the story of the Good Samaritan or that story about the rich man and Lazarus, those people who were given God’s glory were not necessarily Catholics. There was no particular religion that our Lord mentions when he talked about these two beautiful stories.

So it’s a question to us whether we are a good Catholic? Or are we a good Muslim or Buddhist? But because we are good Catholics, we should be absolutely sure that there is God waiting for us in the afterlife. If someone wants proof of this, I’m sure no one can give you any evidences. All we need to do is accept this with a childlike faith and God will do the rest.

A few years ago, I got this story from the Internet about a Christian doctor who had a patient who was terminally ill. The patient asked the doctor about the afterlife if there are evidences to show it existed? Naturally the doctor could offer no such evidence. Then suddenly, there was a yelping and scratching on the doctor’s office door. When the doctor opened the door, his dog jumped in to embrace him and licked his face.

Surprised that his wife came to the office with his dog, the doctor then turned to his patient and told him that this was the first time that his dog came to his office. He never knew that I was behind that door, yet his faith told him I was there inside. So it should also be like us. We have never been to the “other side” because going there means we have to die first. But we know that God is waiting for us in paradise so long as we obey his words and his commandments. So the choice is yours, not Gods. So choose wisely!