Neither marry nor are given in marriage

6 NOVEMBER (Lk 20,27-38)
When you are without any faith in the Word of the living God, not only you have a paltry, poor vision, of the things of the earth and of our own lives, but even more miserable and poor is the vision we have of eternal things. St. Paul tells us in Romans that between what takes place on this earth even in crosses and sufferings and between what we will receive in heaven there is no possible, conceivable and imaginable comparison. Heaven is quite another thing. It is infinitely, divinely and eternally beyond. On earth there are no realities with which we can configure it.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labour pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance (Rm 8,18-25).

St. Paul himself tells us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians that he was abducted in Heaven. The Lord showed him his eternal home. The things seen are indescribable. There is no language on earth that can narrate them. The very concepts are lacking. Heaven is divine. The earth is miserable matter. Never from the earth you might describe God’s Heaven.

I must boast; not that it is profitable, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know someone in Christ who, fourteen years ago (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows), was caught up to the third heaven. And I know that this person (whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows) was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable things, which no one may utter. About this person I will boast, but about myself I will not boast, except about my weaknesses. Although if I should wish to boast, I would not be foolish, for I would be telling the truth. But I refrain, so that no one may think more of me than what he sees in me or hears from me because of the abundance of the revelations (2Cor 12,1-7).

The Sadducees have the presumption, denying and rejecting the Word of God that reveals the existence of eternal life, to assert that there is no resurrection and so that their thinking has the charisma of the truth, they use the earth events to affirm canonicity of their every thought. Jesus says it clearly: they speak from the non knowledge of the Scriptures, from the great ignorance of God and from the rejection of the truth.

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.”

The resurrection is the most sublime work of God. For it, the Lord will transform a body of earth into a body of spirit: immortal, incorruptible, spiritual and glorious. The body of flesh ends. Also matrimony and marriage end. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. He is the God who calls to life the bodies that have returned to dust.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints always make us from the Word.