Gospel: Mark
12:18-27
Some
Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus 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 and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and
died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no
descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they
arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus
said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the
power of God? When they rise from the dead, they
neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in
heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in
the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You
are greatly misled.”
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Reflection:
Is there
an afterlife or resurrection after our life in this world is over? There is but
it's very different from the life that we have right now.
In the
gospel a religious group who do not believe in the resurrection asked Jesus
about a lady who married seven brothers who subsequently died one after the
other. They asked Jesus, whose wife would she be in the afterlife?
Jesus said to them, "Are you not misled
because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from
the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the
angels in heaven.
The
resurrected life with Jesus in heaven is totally different from the life that
we have right now. If here we have pains and sorrows there shall be no more
there, what we will have there is a life with Jesus that is blissful and
heavenly.
We must
aspire for that heavenly life and we must start right now by following the teachings
of Jesus. – Marino J. Dasmarinas