God’s Bride

 

Welcome to my blog. Peace be with you.

 

Saturday 21 November 2020

God’s Bride

 

First reading

Apocalypse 11:4-12 ·

The prophets will die who have been a plague to the world

I, John, heard a voice saying: ‘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. They are able to lock up the sky so that it does not rain as long as they are prophesying; they are able to turn water into blood and strike the whole world with any plague as often as they like. When they have completed their witnessing, the beast that comes out of the Abyss is going to make war on them and overcome them and kill them. Their corpses will lie in the main street of the Great City known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified. Men out of every people, race, language and nation will stare at their corpses, for three-and-a-half days, not letting them be buried, and the people of the world will be glad about it and celebrate the event by giving presents to each other, because these two prophets have been a plague to the people of the world.’

After the three-and-a-half days, God breathed life into them and they stood up, and everybody who saw it happen was terrified; then they heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, ‘Come up here’, and while their enemies were watching, they went up to heaven in a cloud.

 

Prayerful reflection

The book of Revelation is written in symbolic language so that the persecutors of the Christians would not understand. It is a subversive book to show that those who persecute the Church will ultimately be defeated.

Jesus sent his disciples to preach two by two. The two witnesses are symbolic of all proclaimers of the Good News of Jesus. They are anointed with the Holy Spirit and so full of power. However, in this hostile world, they will be persecuted and even killed. But all this is only temporary as it was with Jesus ministry too. As God raised up Jesus from the grave, so he will raise up all those who have been his witnesses. They will live in glory in heaven with God.

The responsorial psalm is aptly chosen. It can be the prayer of all those who go to preach the Gospel.

 

Psalm

Psalm 143(144):1-2,9-10

Blessed be the Lord, my rock.

Blessed be the Lord, my rock,

who trains my arms for battle,

who prepares my hands for war.

Blessed be the Lord, my rock.

He is my love, my fortress;

he is my stronghold, my saviour

my shield, my place of refuge.

He brings peoples under my rule.

Blessed be the Lord, my rock.

To you, O God, will I sing a new song;

I will play on the ten-stringed lute

to you who give kings their victory,

who set David your servant free.

Blessed be the Lord, my rock.

Gospel

Luke 20:27-40

In God all men are alive

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.’

Some scribes then spoke up. ‘Well put, Master’ they said – because they would not dare to ask him any more questions.

 

Prayerful reflection

Since we all die, it is essential that people marry and have children. Otherwise the race would die out. Heaven is not like earth. There, there is no death nor passage of time. it is an ‘everlasting now’. Though there are relationships, the love of God for each is superabundant. Heaven is a marriage with God. In him we are united with all in love. We do not know this experience now and so have no way of describing it.

Furthermore, we are all in some way eternal beings since God who conceived us is eternal. Hence, all are alive to him.

Celibacy in the Church is the desire to live the life of union with God in heaven, even now on earth. Like all things here, this is also imperfectly lived. Nonetheless, there are those who profess our faith in the life of the Kingdom and give witness to it, here and now.