Autumn has finally begun to show her face in the Big Apple. Spending the mornings at the Convent of the Sacred Heart where I minister as chaplain, I can view a great panorama of Central Park from the roof of the building. The red and yellow leaves shimmer with a wonderful muted light that only Autumn seems to be able to provide. Soon the leaves will blanket the ground – preparing the earth for its long winter’s sleep.
We’ve just paid homage to the arrival of Fall with three consecutive days of celebration: Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. But we continue reflecting on the sentiment of these three days for a month, until the beginning of our new Liturgical Year on the First Sunday of Advent. This week’s Gospel passage is in line with this Autumnal celebration. We’re thinking about life after death. This is introduced into the Liturgy through Luke’s account of a confrontation between Jesus and the Sadducees.
The Sadducees and the Pharisees were the two politi- cal/religious parties in Palestine at the time of Jesus. The Sadducees were the aristocratic ruling class, and were even more conservative than the Pharisees. They only acknowledged the first five books of the bible as truly revealed by God. They held that there was no resurrection of the dead, and that angels and spirits did not exist. They were in direct opposition to the Pharisees who were the more liberal political party. They accepted in its entirety what we call the Old Testament, and believed in the resurrection of the dead and the existence of angels and spirits. The two parties put aside their differences and united against Jesus.
In the passage today, the Sadducees attacked Jesus on his beliefs in the resurrection. In a question, they contrived a situation in which a man
died leaving his wife childless. They dug up an ancient and archaic Jewish law that obliged the brother of a deceased man to marry his brother’s wife in order to father an heir for him. They made the story extra ridiculous by saying that the man’s seven brothers married the woman but each died before they could produce an heir. Their question to Jesus was this: “In the resurrection whose wife will this woman be?”
Jesus’ answer was quit clear. At the resurrection there will be no marriage. We become like angels. We become the children of God. He went on to remind them of the scene from the book of Exodus when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Moses asked who was speaking to him. God said, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” Jesus went on to say that, “He is the God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive.” In other words, death is not final. We live on.
The Church took this teaching of Jesus and linked it to a very popular pre-Christian, Gaelic celebration, Samhain (pronounced sow -in). The Church made it a three-day event: Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Samhain marked the day of the year when it was believed that the veil between the corporal world and the spiritual world was at its thinnest. It developed a spooky and fantastical side but, at its core, it celebrated the continuity of our lives in the material world and in the spiritual world on the other side of the veil.
The Church followed up by remembering all the Saints who have been crowned in heavenly glory. Then, in the feast of All Souls, it encourages us to remember our friends and relatives who have recently passed through the veil.
Reflecting on Mother Nature’s winter sleep, the Church invites us to celebrate the fullness of our lives, here, in the earthly kingdom and, when we pass over, in the spiritual kingdom of God. As this world retreats into winter hibernation, we ponder the day of our pass-over and resurrection.
