20191110
LIVING
FULLY NOW WITH THE END IN MIND
10 NOVEMBER,
2019, Sunday, 32nd Week, Ordinary Time
Readings at Mass
Liturgical Colour:
Green.
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First reading
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2 Maccabees 7:1-2,9-14 ©
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There were seven brothers who were
arrested with their mother. The king tried to force them to taste pig’s flesh,
which the Law forbids, by torturing them with whips and scourges. One of them,
acting as spokesman for the others, said, ‘What are you trying to find out from
us? We are prepared to die rather than break the laws of our ancestors.’
With
his last breath the second brother exclaimed, ‘Inhuman fiend, you may discharge
us from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since it
is for his laws that we die, to live again for ever.’
After
him, they amused themselves with the third, who on being asked for his tongue
promptly thrust it out and boldly held out his hands, with these honourable
words, ‘It was heaven that gave me these limbs; for the sake of his laws I
disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again.’ The king and his
attendants were astounded at the young man’s courage and his utter indifference
to suffering.
When
this one was dead they subjected the fourth to the same savage torture. When he
neared his end he cried, ‘Ours is the better choice, to meet death at men’s
hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him; whereas
for you there can be no resurrection, no new life.’
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Responsorial Psalm
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Psalm
16(17):1,5-6,8,15 ©
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I shall be filled, when
I awake, with the sight of your glory, O Lord.
Lord, hear a cause that is just,
pay heed to my cry.
Turn your ear to my prayer:
no deceit is on my lips.
I shall be filled, when
I awake, with the sight of your glory, O Lord.
I kept my feet firmly in your
paths;
there was no faltering in my
steps.
I am here and I call, you will hear me, O
God.
Turn your ear to me; hear my
words.
I shall be filled, when
I awake, with the sight of your glory, O Lord.
Guard me as the apple of your eye.
Hide me in the shadow of your
wings
As for me, in my justice I shall see your
face
and be filled, when I awake,
with the sight of your glory.
I shall be filled, when
I awake, with the sight of your glory, O Lord.
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Second reading
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2 Thessalonians
2:16-3:5 ©
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May our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God
our Father who has given us his love and, through his grace, such inexhaustible
comfort and such sure hope, comfort you and strengthen you in everything good
that you do or say.
Finally,
brothers, pray for us; pray that the Lord’s message may spread quickly, and be
received with honour as it was among you; and pray that we may be preserved
from the interference of bigoted and evil people, for faith is not given to
everyone. But the Lord is faithful, and he will give you strength and guard you
from the evil one, and we, in the Lord, have every confidence that you are
doing and will go on doing all that we tell you. May the Lord turn your hearts
towards the love of God and the fortitude of Christ.
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Gospel Acclamation
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Lk21:36
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Stay awake, praying at all times
for the strength to stand with confidence
before the Son of Man.
Alleluia!
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Or:
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Rv1:5,6
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Alleluia, alleluia!
Jesus Christ is the First-born from the
dead:
to him be glory and power for ever and
ever.
Alleluia!
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Gospel
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Luke 20:27-38 ©
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Some Sadducees – those who say that
there is no resurrection – approached Jesus and they put this question to
him, ‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man’s married brother
dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his
brother. Well then, there were seven brothers. The first, having married a
wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the
same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself
died. Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had
been married to all seven?’
Jesus
replied, ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are
judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the
dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the
angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses
himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where
he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in
fact alive.’
LIVING FULLY NOW
WITH THE END IN MIND
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [ 2 MC 7:1-2,9-14; PS 17; 2 TH 2:16 – 3:5; LK 20:27-38 ]
How can we live fully? To be able to live fully, we must
know our destination, and then the outcome of how we live today will have an
impact on our future. We cannot live purposefully unless we are clear of
our goals, what we want to achieve and what we want to arrive at. In
order to build a house, we must have a clear idea of what we want to
construct. This is the basic principle of success. If it is true,
then what about success in life?
How do we define success
in life? Unfortunately, most people measure success in terms of material
wealth, personal prestige and power. We have been indoctrinated by the world,
and especially by our elders, that the path to success is to study hard, find a
good career, make lots of money, accumulate wealth and property, and then we
can do whatever we want and enjoy all the luxuries of life. If that is
the measure of success, we are most pitiable. This precisely was the attitude
of the Sadducees. Their philosophy was simply focused on life on this earth.
Everything they did was targeted at increasing their wealth, power and pleasure
in this world. And this was expressed in their belief that the soul
is not immortal and there is no afterlife. After death, there is no
retribution, punishment or rewards. This explains why they rejected the
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as they only subscribed to the Torah,
the Laws of Moses and the earlier traditional Israelite’s belief in Sheol after
death, a place of non-existence for all.
Indeed, this denial of
life after death, the immortality of the soul and the fact of the resurrection
has disastrous consequences.
As St Paul wrote, “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been
raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still
in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If
for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be
pitied.” (1 Cor 15:16-19)
Without faith in the world to come or that life continues after death, people
will live their lives recklessly, selfishly without a thought for tomorrow or
the future of humanity or their own future. If there is no tomorrow and
life just ends at death, why should anyone work hard for tomorrow? Why
should we care about the future of humanity when there is no absolute
future? All the good that we do would be futile because they would be
undone and all our efforts and sacrifices would have been given in vain.
It is the loss of faith
in a definite future that has led the world to become more individualistic,
relativistic and materialistic. Today, the modern man is individualistic. He lives only for himself.
His goal is to live as well as he could by grabbing as much as he can in this
world for himself. It is about him and not about others. This is
the height of idolatry. In the past, people worshipped idols so that they
could get power, money and success from the deities. Now people simply
worship themselves. They have supplanted the place of God and made
themselves the ultimate goal in their life. Everything they do is for
their own interests; otherwise, there is no reason to do them. The modern
man is egoistic. He must have things his way. He makes himself the
center of the world, and wants the world to worship him on facebook, Instagram,
blogs, etc. He wants to be popular and the focus of everyone’s attention.
Since there is no
afterlife, no eternity, he cannot believe in God either and therefore in
absolutes. So
he makes himself the measure of what is right or good, or rather what is
pragmatic for him to do. Everything is done in relation to his needs and
perception. There is no good or evil, no right or wrong but a matter of
perspective. Everything is relative. Values are changing and we
decide what values we want to adopt in life. This explains why society is
so divided, as there is no basis for any agreement as to what is good or
bad. At most, society through consensus can decide what is best for all
but it has nothing to do with morality. The common good for society is
not based on absolute principles but on preferences.
Since there is no
immortal soul and no God, then we, like the rest of the world, are constituted
only of matter.
As material beings, we find fulfillment only through material
satisfaction. So if one wants to find happiness, we need to look for
pleasures that our body seeks, namely, food, music, comforts, sex, adventures
and thrills. We think that if we satisfy every want our bodily desire, we
can find happiness and fulfillment in life. Yet the truth we know is that
earthly and worldly things cannot satisfy us. The moment we have them, we
grow tired of them. That is why we keep going from one thing to another
because nothing on this earth can give us the joy and fulfilment that our soul
is seeking.
Thus, we can see that
individualism makes us lonely people, relativism makes us confused people, and
materialism makes us unfulfilled people. This is the cause of despair in
the world. This
explains why there is a growing nihilistic trend in the world often expressed
in Satanic music, black metal music and in varying degrees, the feeling of
despair among our young people. This is the strategy of the Evil One, to
drive us all to despair, fed up with life, resentful of the world, promote
killings, violence, suicide and death. We see this phenomenon in the
world today more and more when people simply kill without any reason or simply
because they are not happy with society. And they can perform these
killings without remorse or sensibility.
But if we have faith in
the immortality of the soul and better still, faith in the resurrection, then
our perspective towards life is very different. This was precisely the
attitude of the seven brothers in the first reading. Instead of
renouncing their faith in God and worshipping the pagan deities, they refused
to break the laws and pledged their total allegiance to the God of
Israel. They kept the laws not out of fear but reverence, knowing that
the Laws teach them to know what is true and good. They did not fall into
relativism. The second brother said, “Inhuman fiend, you may discharge us
from this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up, since it is
for his laws that we die, to live again for ever.” They believed that
upon death, their bodies would be resurrected as the third brother remarked,
“It was heaven that gave me these limbs; for the sake of his laws I disdain
them; from him I hope to receive them again.” All of them believed that life on
earth is just a passing thing and life with God in eternity is even
greater. They were not materialists who lived only for this world.
The fourth brother put it aptly, “Ours is the better choice, to meet death at
man’s hands, yet relying on God’s promise that we shall be raised up by him;
whereas for you there can be no resurrection, no new life.” Jesus confirmed
this truth when He said, “Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in
the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the
living; for to him all men are in fact alive.”
Consequently, we should
live our life on this earth in view of the eternal life that we are all
destined for. Our life on earth is temporary. This is what St Peter wrote, “I urge you,
as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war
against your soul.” (1 Pt 2:11c, NIV) St Paul also reminds
us, “Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in
their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in
heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed
to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things
subject to himself.” (Phil 3:19-21)
More importantly, Jesus
in the gospel tells us that only the resurrected life can complete our
happiness because
as He said, “The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who
are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from
the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as
the angels, and being children of the resurrection, they are sons of
God.” In other words, in heaven all of us will be able to recognize our
loved ones on earth as there is a continuity in relationships, but all
relationships will be raised higher in that we will all love each other as much
as God loves us, and we will love all others as much as we love our loved ones
on earth.
With such thoughts as
these, perfection in love in heaven, and fullness of life in Christ, we should
therefore live heaven on
earth as St Paul urges us, “This one thing I do: forgetting what lies
behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for
the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who
are mature be of the same mind.” (Phil 3:13-15a) Only with a confident hope in tomorrow,
will we give ourselves to God by anticipating the resurrected life in Christ
through humble and unconditional love and service. We have now a motive
to do good and a confident hope that the good we do will not be done in vain
but will achieve the ultimate good of all when we all meet together in heaven
with our resurrected bodies.
Written
by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All
Rights Reserved
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