Happy Ending – 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
In 1981, a devastating flood in China caused an ancient pagoda to collapse at Famen Temple near Xian, Taiwan. Looking through the rubble few years later, archaeologists discovered what they believed to be one of Buddha’s fingers. The relic was sealed in a miniature stone casket and placed there 1,000 years earlier during the Tang Dynasty. So sacred is the finger to Buddhists in Taiwan and elsewhere, that tens of thousands of people have turned out to pay homage to it. This precious relic is even closely guarded by four monks who are martial arts experts.
If someone claimed to find a finger that belonged to Christ, no Christian would believe him. The Christian faith is founded on the fact that Christ died and rose from the dead. There is no finger to find since he is alive! Instead Christianity’s greatest relic is the empty tomb in Jerusalem or the Shroud used to cover Jesus’s body now found in Turin, Italy. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is in Jerusalem answering the Sadducees trap question. As the Jewish governing class, they rejected the idea of the resurrection because the Torah was silent about it.
Jesus expertly points out the Sadducees’ ignorance about the existence and nature of life after death with God. He refutes their misconception that eternal life is in this world. First, he provides a biblical proof of the reality of the resurrection with God’s conversation with Moses at the burning bush. Thus he uses their sacred text of the Torah to show that there is, indeed, a resurrection. Secondly, Jesus authoritatively explains that things will be different when we die. Normal human relationships like marriage will also be transformed. As children of God, we shall all be like angels. For now, what we shall be is something we await with excitement and hope. I am convinced that those who persevere in faith, it will be a happy ending.
Prayer:Lord, give me a tenacious faith in your resurrection so that I may persevere in awaiting for it with hopeful excitement. Amen.
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