Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

Title

The Future is Unimaginable

Outline

I have seen many books and articles predicting the future of the USA and more describing our future in heaven or hell

All muster good reasons for this future, when it be the disaster of climate change or the streets of gold in heaven

But I have seen more than one book be wrong, sometimes because the future was worse or better than predicted, but often because it was unimaginable - who imagined WW II ending with a nuclear blast and leading into an international nuclear standoff?

The fact is that without a clear prophetic word we do not know the future, but we can know the God of the future

Our texts give us two examples

1 Maccabees shows God bringing about the demise of Antiochus Epiphanes

He was saddled with tremendous debt from the defeat of his father Antiochus the Great by the Romans

He had tried to recoup some funds by fleecing his restive province of Judah and bringing it into more unity with the rest of his kingdom

He tried to gain yet more funds by raiding Persia

But God brought him down by his being repulsed with losses from Persia and then learning that much of his army had been defeated by Judah - that the Temple in Jerusalem was functioning again.

He had had good plans from this world’s point of view, but he had not reckoned with God, who, without sending an angel or other being, brought about his sad death in Babylon, to him a foreign land

Jesus is confronted by a conundrum presented by the Sadducees to embarrass him

Jesus, with the Pharisees, believed in the resurrection of the dead. The Sadducees who only accepted the Torah did not

So they present a woman who had been widowed seven times, each time by the death of one of seven brothers, and had then died. They had followed the Torah in the matter of levirite marriage. Now in the supposed resurrection, whose wife would she be?

That Tobit has a woman who had been married seven times may be no coincidence. It at least shows that the situation was not unimaginable.

Jesus, besides showing that there is evidence for the resurrection of the dead even in the Torah, responds that the resurrection is unimaginable: “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 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. 36 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.”

In other words, they have not paid attention to the fact that God said “I am” not “I was” and they cannot imagine the resurrection for it is in a new sphere where marriage is no longer needed and where the fact of being children of God explains all.

So, Sisters, it is not that the literature is wrong

Some of it is - some see the coming age like a past age, the 1950’s perhaps for the more traditional or the 1970’s for the charismatics, and others see a plot under every bush and certainly a cabal in Rome as well as in Washington.

Some of it is quite realistic, if horribly realistic. There is reasonable scientific evidence that the USA, if not all of Western culture, may collapse and that the seas may rise.

But science is within this age, this space-time creation, and cannot factor in the unknowable God.

But we know that God. We may not know the future, but we know what we are called to be and do just now. And we know how to get to know him better. That is our security.

In the east end of the Stone Chapel at Lanier Theological Library there is a last judgment scene. Pillars and buildings are falling, flames are burning, destruction everywhere. Those on Jesus’ left are quite distressed. But those on his right are being ushered out of the collapse upward towards a glorious future and their faces express joy, not distress.

That is us. The world may collapse around us. Church structures may collapse around us. But our security is in our knowing Him, following his directions in the present and knowing that our coming closer to him now is our future. Therefore we do not need to know the future of this world or fear it if we do, for the future we do not know is Him, and that will be good, it will be very good.

Readings

Catholic Daily Readings 11-20-2021: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

FIRST READING

1 Maccabees 6:1–13

1 As King Antiochus passed through the eastern provinces, he heard that in Persia there was a city, Elam, famous for its wealth in silver and gold, 2 and that its temple was very rich, containing gold helmets, breastplates, and weapons left there by the first king of the Greeks, Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedon. 3 He went therefore and tried to capture and loot the city. But he could not do so, because his plan became known to the people of the city 4 who rose up in battle against him. So he fled and in great dismay withdrew from there to return to Babylon.

5 While he was in Persia, a messenger brought him news that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been routed; 6 that Lysias had gone at first with a strong army and been driven back; that the people of Judah had grown strong by reason of the arms, wealth, and abundant spoils taken from the armies they had cut down; 7 that they had pulled down the abomination which he had built upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded with high walls both the sanctuary, as it had been before, and his city of Beth-zur.

8 When the king heard this news, he was astonished and very much shaken. Sick with grief because his designs had failed, he took to his bed. 9 There he remained many days, assailed by waves of grief, for he thought he was going to die. 10 So he called in all his Friends and said to them: “Sleep has departed from my eyes, and my heart sinks from anxiety. 11 I said to myself: ‘Into what tribulation have I come, and in what floods of sorrow am I now! Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.’ 12 But I now recall the evils I did in Jerusalem, when I carried away all the vessels of silver and gold that were in it, and for no cause gave orders that the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed. 13 I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land.”

Catholic Daily Readings 11-20-2021: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

RESPONSE

Psalm 9:16a

16 The nations fall into the pit they dig;

in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.

PSALM

Psalm 9:2–4, 6, 16, 19

2 I will praise you, LORD, with all my heart;

I will declare all your wondrous deeds.

3 I will delight and rejoice in you;

I will sing hymns to your name, Most High.

4 When my enemies turn back,

they stumble and perish before you.

6 You rebuked the nations, you destroyed the wicked;

their name you blotted out for all time.

16 The nations fall into the pit they dig;

in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.

19 For the needy will never be forgotten,

nor will the hope of the afflicted ever fade.

Catholic Daily Readings 11-20-2021: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

2 Timothy 1:10

10 but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,

GOSPEL

Luke 20:27–40

27 Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him, 28 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.’ 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. 30 Then the second 31 and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 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. 36 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. 37 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; 38 and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” 39 Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” 40 And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

Notes

Catholic Daily Readings 11-20-2021: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2021 | ORDINARY TIME

SATURDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

YEAR 1 | ROMAN MISSAL | LECTIONARY

First Reading 1 Maccabees 6:1–13

Response Psalm 9:16a

Psalm Psalm 9:2–4, 6, 16, 19

Gospel Acclamation 2 Timothy 1:10

Gospel Luke 20:27–40

GREEN