Wednesday in the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time, June 3, 2020

Mark 12:18-27

Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, 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.’ Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. So the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. And the seven left no descendants. Last of all the woman also died. At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.” Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”

In this passage from the Gospel of St. Mark, God himself describes the life of heaven for us.  Notice how circumspectly he speaks, though, saying only as much as is needful for answering the question posed to him.  Notice also the authority with which he speaks.  He tells of heavenly realities not as a theologian, but as a witness.  He does not quote Scripture or use reason to validate his statement: “When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven.” Nothing in the Jewish Scriptures so much as hints at this.  We have the revelation from the very lips of God.

With these words, Jesus tells us that marriage is a living sign of the bond between God and the soul in the state of grace.  In heaven, there are no more signs, but rather the reality to which the signs pointed: perfect and eternal unity with God.  He tells us further that the blessed will be “like the angels in heaven”.  He does not say that they will themselves be angels, but “like the angels”.  Humans and angels are different species, just as whales and elephants are different species.  The angels are our cousins, in a matter of speaking.  We cannot really say “brothers” because while they are wiser and more powerful than humans, they are creations of God, and the baptized are God’s children by adoption.  The baptized possess a glory not even the angels have.  To be “like the angels” means, most of all, to have a direct view of the Beatific Vision, it means to see God as he is in all his splendor, Love overflowing (cf. Luke 6, 38).  

The Lord Jesus, after having answered the question posed by the Sadducees, addresses their teaching that there is no resurrection, the source of their question.  The Lord has already shown the existence of the angels and of immortal souls.  He spoke on his own authority in doing so.  Here, he quotes Scripture — the Book of Exodus, which they accept, rather than the books of the prophets, which they do not.  He speaks to them on their own terms: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  The Lord points out that God did not say, “I was the God of Abraham”, but “I am.”  At the time God is speaking to Moses, Abraham and the Patriarchs had been dead for centuries.  Yet, God says that he is — he remains — their God.  This can only be true if the Patriarchs are still alive.  The Lord’s explanation is so simple as to be deadly to any error or misunderstanding, and it sheds light for us on why God continually referred to himself in this way throughout the Old Testament.  He was revealing the truth of the resurrection from the very beginning.

The Lord’s final words to the Sadducees, “You are greatly misled”, ought to give us pause.  The Sadducees did not hold their views out of idiocy or because they did not read the Scriptures, and the Lord does not rebuke them with anger.  Out of his love for them, he points out that they are “greatly misled”.  From time to time we ourselves may come to hold mistaken ideas through misinterpretation of the Scriptures and Tradition, or from an obstinate willfulness to justify sinful behavior.  It is necessary for our salvation, and even for happiness on earth, to possess humility so that we may be open, and even eager, to correction by the Church.