WHAT OF OUR WORDS?
Author: Fr. J. Michael Byron
November 10, 2019
I believe
I’ve mentioned before that sometimes the ritual prayers that are prescribed in
Catholic sacramental books drive me crazy. For example, two weeks ago our
closing prayer at Mass, after communion, begged God that what we “now celebrate
in signs” (meaning the Eucharist) we may one day “celebrate in truth.” What?!
That may be the most singularly non-Catholic sentence uttered in the course of
a liturgical year—at least as American speakers of English understand those
words. What happens around this table every week is not a “sign” of something
that is not yet “true.” It is at the heart of our faith to affirm exactly the
opposite!
And I am
given similarly strange words to say out loud at the end of every graveside
ritual of committal for a deceased person. The final prayer gives the presiding
minister two options from which to choose. One of them says, “Do not count
his/her deeds against them, for in their heart they desired to do your will.”
In one sentence there we have the presumption that the dead person’s deeds were
wicked, and that they really didn’t mean it. Neither I nor any other human
being have any way to know if any of that is true in 99% of times.
The second
prayer option at the grave presents the equal and opposite sentiment. It
announces that “since they were faithful to your will on earth, now join them
to the angels in heaven.” Who knows whether the heart of any other person was
“faithful to God’s will on earth?” I don’t. So why are ministers instructed to
say so in public? We have a way yet to go on getting things right in our public
prayer books.
And we have
a particular challenge when our words involve speculation about resurrection
and the life of heaven, and our Sacred Scriptures today invite us to remember
that.
Our first reading
today (Maccabees) is a pure and bold confession of seven brothers that
resurrection life is not only real but is worth suffering and dying for now.
This testimony was given at a time in Jewish history when it was hotly disputed
whether there was an afterlife at all—a debate which was still raging at the
time of Jesus, between the Pharisees (who said “yes”) and the Sadducees (who
said “no”). And as I have come to discover more and more during the years of my
theological studies and pastoral ministry, the more we try to talk about what
life beyond the grave is like, the more likely we are to get it wrong, or to
say things that just don’t make sense, or at least that we have no way of being
sure are true.
The basic
question boils down to this: Resurrection: yes or no? Life beyond this world, life forever with God: yes or no? The answer to that question pretty
much separates those who are hopeless for anything more than what we now know
in this world, from those who await something beautifully better.
But often
enough, those of us who come down on the “beautifully better” side of that
question aren’t content to let it rest there. We have this strange desire to
explain it. That’s not necessarily a very good idea when it comes to the
mystery of eternity.
The
Sadducees in today’s gospel offer a perfect illustration of that, and they
represent the theologians at their absolute worst. (who still live among us).
They pose a riddle for Jesus—an absurd situation involving seven brothers who
marry a childless wife, simply to point out that the very concept of eternal
life shatters all of the assumptions of what our present life tells us is
possible, and what are the limits of our hope.
Well yes,
that’s just exactly what resurrection faith does—it forces the decision of yes
or no upon each of us. If resurrection is a “no”, then we may not have much
reason for hope, but at least we are spared from having to think outside the
box, or to imagine possibilities that the constrictions of life don’t already
limit. But if resurrection is a “yes”, then we are invited in to a world of new
joys and expectations that are unfathomable to us now. And for that reason that
world is literally indescribable in human words now, and so we’d better be very
cautious when we presume to try to do that.
Jesus’ words
in the gospel today, in response to that alleged problem with the woman married
seven times, are to say that there’s no such thing as marriage in the world to
come. That’s inconceivable to an ancient Jewish audience, and it’s still
baffling to a modern Christian audience—especially since this is the same Jesus
who elsewhere goes out of his way to affirm the holiness and goodness of
marriage in this world. The realm of resurrection is not simply taking the best
things about our present existence and making them bigger and better and longer
lasting. It is, rather, about utter transformation into a way of life that
explodes all of our merely earthly ways of understanding. To speak of eternity
with God does not mean to speak of a really, really, really long time. It means
to speak of a realm where time doesn’t exist. Who can imagine such a thing?
For the
moment, we can’t. And we don’t have to. But we can believe. We can trust the
promise of Jesus. And we can quit trying to disprove the reality of resurrection
by making it too small, by explaining how it doesn’t fit in to our
pre-conceived ideas of what could ever be possible. In other words, we can
refrain from becoming Sadducees. As we have been taught by our Lord, we have
every reason to cling to a hope and an expectation that is more enormous that
our imagination, and certainly more vast than our attempts at description. We
are dealing with radical stuff here.
|