St. Charles Lwanga & Comp., Martyrs
2 Timothy 1:1-3,6-12  +  Mark 12:18-27
June 3, 2020

“He is not God of the dead but of the living.”

In today’s Gospel passage, Our Lord tries to make clear to the Sadducees the meaning of the Resurrection.  We too, however, even if we understand and believe in both the Resurrection of Our Lord and the promise of resurrection that God offers to all who die, perhaps need to realize what type of claim the Resurrection places upon us.

To believe in the Resurrection is to believe in the future fulfillment of God’s grace.  In turn, this is to understand that the suffering of the present is as nothing compared to the future glory to be revealed in Christ Jesus.  Furthermore, this is to guard in God’s name what has been entrusted to each of us until that final Day, which for each of us is the day of one’s death.

We never find Our Lord going into great detail about the nature of the afterlife.  There are two practical reasons for this.  First, the glory which will be the reward of God’s elect is too far beyond our comprehension.  Second, our only hope for sharing in that glory is to persevere in running the race which God has set before us in the here and now.  The virtue of perseverance stirs into flame the gift of God, which each of us first received at baptism.  In this flame, each of us is purified like gold in the furnace.