Reflection for June 7, Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time: Mark 12:18-27

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:

What is your idea of the afterlife? Jesus gives us a glimpse of what life is in the afterlife. He tells us that there’s no more human activity in heaven such as marriage for we all will be like angels there (Mark 12:25). But are we going to heaven after our lives are over and done with in this world?  Nobody is sure about this, only God knows where we would end up after we cease breathing. 

But on hindsight even if we don’t hold our destiny after our life is over we also have to do our part. We have to live our life pleasing to the eyes of the Lord and not pleasing to our own eyes.  What does it mean to make our lives pleasing to the eyes of God? We have to live the teachings of God and not the teachings of this world. 

If we decide to follow Jesus let us follow Him until the end of our lives. We should not allow sin or anything that contradicts the teachings of God to momentarily derail us. It must be authentic discipleship for Jesus all the way until we stop breathing! 

Let us therefore make it a part of our prayers to ask Jesus to bring us to heaven when our time comes. Let us ask Him to shower us His infinite mercy for we all have fell short of His expectations. – Marino J. Dasmarinas