Reflection for November 20, Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time: Luke 20:27-40

Gospel: Luke 20:27-40

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, 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. Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well. And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

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Reflection:

Do you believe in the afterlife? 

The afterlife/everlasting life is very different from this present life where we are in. Our life here has an eventual ending. The life everlasting has no ending there shall be no more suffering for us there. 

It will be a heavenly experience for all of us there. But the sad reality is this: Not all of us will have that divine experience. Some will go to the other side where it will endlessly be hot; where there exist eternal suffering. 

In the gospel, Jesus was asked by the Sadducees (who did not believe in the resurrection) regarding a woman who married seven brothers in different time period. They said: “In the afterlife whose wife will that woman be?” 

Jesus gave them a glimpse of what it is in the resurrection when He said: “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. 

We should strive to be in that place someday by doing good and by following the way of Jesus. How about the married life relationship that we have in this world can we still have it in heaven? Nobody knows only God knows. – Marino J. Dasmarinas