Everlasting Encouragement
32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
- 2 Maccabees 7: 1-12, 9-14
- Psalm 17: 1, 5-6, 8, 15
- 2 Thessalonians 2: 16-3: 5
- Luke 20: 27-38
Our first reading today, from Maccabees, reminds us that any suffering we face in this life is temporary and will be done away with in the life to come.
And our Gospel reading today tells us that marriage in this life is temporary and will not be part of the life to come.
If this sounds like the setup to a Henny Youngman joke, I assure you that’s not where I’m going with this.
But the theme that unites these is what St. Paul speaks of in the second reading: God’s gift of everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace. Our good hope is for that promise of life with God, that even through the difficulties and hardships of life we still have that promise. A promise of encouragement – of everlasting encouragement – an encouragement that does not end with this life but which remains with us into eternity.
In this respect we can look to one another – the relationships with one another, the friendships and community we find here – as agents of that encouragement. We are here to support one another; to build up one another, to be God’s grace and strength for one another.
And of course marriage is the ultimate expression of that relationship. Maybe that’s why our readings pair these ideas together – because marriage in this life should stand as a counterbalance to our suffering in this life. A constant reminder that we should never suffer alone.
In the Catholic understanding, marriage has two purposes: the raising of children, but also the mutual support of the spouses. The latter I’ve heard described as saying that our job in in marriage is to help our spouse get to heaven. To be that agent of God’s everlasting encouragement to one another.
When the Saducees challenge Jesus, they focus on the procreative side of marriage. These seven brothers all marry the one woman, in hopes that at least one of them will produce an offspring. The Levirate laws they refer to are all about the need and obligation to continue the family bloodline. And Jesus tells them that in the next life none of that will matter. When we have all entered into eternal life, the legal and social structures we have to protect and uphold family life will no longer apply. But the relationships we form – whether in marriage or within our community – these we retain into eternal life.
God’s promise of eternal life is not a continuation of the life that we know now, but a rebirth into something we can barely imagine. But what we do know of that next life is what Scripture tells us will endure. God’s love will endure. Our love for God, which is intimately tied into our love for one another. That is what we carry over from this life into the next.
Dorothy Day once said, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” It’s a sobering thought and a challenge.
And if love in that context seems like too great a challenge, if loving your enemy seems like an impossible bar to clear, maybe we can start by sharing in God’s everlasting encouragement.
Even where we have trouble loving someone, we can at least encourage them, as St. Paul says, to strengthen them in every good deed and word.
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