32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14
2 Thes 2:16-3:5
Luke 20:27-38

In many African tales and myths, there is a strong strand of belief that the way an adult man survived death was through his children. The spirits of the married man are transferred from one generation to the next through his children. Hence in many indigenous cultures of the world, there is acceptance of the physical death but the spirits remain part of the fabric of life so tangible to the human senses.

It was this kind of belief that led to the “levirate law of Deuteronomy 25,” whose purpose was to ensure the continuity of a deceased brother’s line by having his surviving brother produce children in his name. In many ways, these cultures seem to indicate that man, in choosing children, gave up the possibility of personal survival after death. All ends in death except the children who would now shoulder the legacy of the deceased. In many parts of west Africa, where I worked for two years, childless couples are frowned upon by the general public. Celibate priests are judged worse than others because priests do not put forth shoots like bananas!

By contrast, the scripture readings from 2 Maccabees and Luke speak of personal survival after death. As the seven brothers and their mother who were arrested and tortured testified, “you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever”. This is a personal assertion of confidence in their personal resurrection from death by God’s power.

What is our attitude toward death? Although we look on ourselves as “believers,” many of us share different attitudes toward death that are held by non-believers. I know some of my friends are ‘fatalists’; we speak of an hour “when our time has come,” or a "ticket” that has our name written on it. Some of us think we are called to face death with self-discipline and good manners.

Whatever it is for us, Jesus’ death was something he freely accepted in the words of the Second Eucharistic Prayer. Our question is, ‘What enabled Jesus to pass from the dread of the Garden of Gethsemani to the “free” acceptance of Calvary? I believe it was Jesus’ absolute trust and faith in his Father. The Father that Jesus proclaimed by his words and actions was not a “puppet-master” that, cuts our strings when he is tired of playing with us.

God is our Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who respects our freedom, and yet has “the very hairs on our head counted.” “Our very names,” as the prophet Isaiah says, “are written on the palms of his hands.” He is the kind of God, therefore, who will not allow even death to separate him from his friends. As the Gospel says, “God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for him” (Luke 20:38)