WITNESSING FOR GOD OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, THIRTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Rev 11:4-12; Ps 144:1-2,9-10; Lk 20:27-40

He is the God of the Living

The reading from the Book of Revelation is quite intriguing. It is the prophecy about two witnesses to the Gospel expected to appear before the end of time. It is difficult to ascertain whether they are actual men or a symbol of two distinct sets of people that would testify to the Gospel. “These, my two witnesses, are the two olive trees and the two lamps that stand before the Lord of the world. Fire can come from their mouths and consume their enemies if anyone tries to harm them; and if anybody does try to harm them, he will certainly be killed in this way.” The appearance and activities of these two witnesses are unique interventions from God for the salvation of many people who are walking the path of perdition. The signs and miracles they are permitted to work are the last graces to cause the conversion of sinners. The wonders they would work: preventing rain from falling, turning water into blood, and striking the world with any plague at will, would not bring about the desired change of minds and hearts to God due to attachment to evil. Thus, the world would rejoice and exchange gifts at their death at the hand of the beast from the Abyss. The death and resurrection of these witnesses would also be similar to that of the Lord. Hence, the two could represent two groups living faithful to God.

We stress the need to eat the word of God daily to prevent our developing a canal mindset. The fixation of minds and hearts on evil, worldly pleasures, and refusal to repent are phenomena we experience daily. Many people, even those we know, are so unrepentant and hardened in their sins and sinful habits that nothing moves them, even the most remarkable miracles from God. Even during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, people were fixated on their sins. Many Jewish people witnessed his wonderful miracles and still refused to repent and turn to God. We have an example of this in the Gospel, with the Sadducees who would rather pose tricky questions and set traps for him to fall or make a mistake in his teaching instead of listening to learn from his teaching or preaching. “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.” What Moses directed them to do was certainly according to the will of God for their time and society and conducive to their communion with the Lord. They failed to understand the temporary suitability of the directive but extrapolated from their situation to the life after. “Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?” Their material way of thinking and their attachment to things of this world made them blind to the reality of the spiritual life.

In responding to them, our Lord pointed out their mistake in the limited way they conceived God. There are indeed two lives: the life of this world or temporal life and the spiritual or eternal life. The principles of these two lives are different; the first life is of this material world, while the second is of God. The former is supported by material activities like marriage and begetting children, but the latter is supported by the word or will of God, like the angels. Since spiritual life is unending, there is no need for marriage and begetting of children. “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, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God.” To clear them on the reality of the resurrection, our Lord referred to the Patriarchs, whom we considered among the twenty-four elders seated on the throne around the Ancient of Days. The Patriarchs remained alive, though not resurrected in the true sense of the word because that only became possible after Jesus died and rose from the dead. But their faith in God’s word kept them spiritually alive while waiting for the fullness of resurrection in Jesus Christ. “Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.” God is the life of all men, but only those who believe in the existence of God can enter into communion with him.

Let us pray: Grant us, we pray, O Lord our God, the constant gladness of being devoted to you, for it is full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy the author of all that is good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.