A Sure & Certain Hope

Catholic Liturgy for the 32^nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Nov. 10, 2019. Gospel of Luke 20:27-38. Theme: A Sure and Certain Hope

Just a few years ago we were horrified to see a choreographed ISIS propaganda video of 21 Christian men, all dressed in orange jumpsuits, kneeling on a beach in Libya. One by one they were asked to deny Christ and one by one, to a man, they refused. Instead they began praying aloud, encouraging one another. Their executioners then did their evil deed. What would enable these men to choose martyrdom over denial? How could they choose death with such serenity as is seen on their faces?

The Gospel of Jesus we heard today and the words of faith spoken by the seven brothers in our first reading, answers these questions for us.  They remind us that the immortality of our souls and the future resurrection of our bodies from the grave are not a “maybe” or an “I hope so”; they are not fantasy nor wishful thinking, but are a sure and certain reality.

These 21 men professed their faith in this reality while kneeling on that beach.  And we profess our faith in this reality every Sunday when we stand to recite the Creed, declaring that we “believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

Our liturgy this morning call our attention to a topic that is very much avoided by our culture: death and what happens to us afterwards. Actually, maybe I am wrong in saying that we avoid this topic. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that go to great lengths to pretend that it doesn’t exist.  Our culture encourages us to deny our true age, masquerade our maturing looks, and manipulate anything that reminds us that we are on a trajectory that will bring our lives to their natural end on planet Earth.

Now, there’s nothing wrong at all with wanting to look our best, be fit and healthy, and make the most out of the gift of life. But we need to do these things with a realistic outlook and a firm faith in who we are as the children of God.  And as Christians, a healthy realistic outlook includes the sure and certain hope that physical death is not the end to our existence, but rather, the beginning of its fullness. It is the conviction that when the first part of our existence, our time on planet Earth, has ended, we move on to a new mode of living, a new way of being in relationship with God and one another.

Those 21 men boldly proclaimed with their lives that God has destroyed the sting, the power, of death for those who are in relationship with Christ.  He himself came in the flesh as one of us, so that precisely as one of us, fully human yet still fully divine, he could pass through death himself in order to conquer it by his Resurrection.  And an awesome part of this reality is that Christ gives this very same victory over death to all who become united with him by baptism. 

This is why it is so important for us to always remember that because of our baptismal relationship, a Christian does not merely die.  A Christian dies in Christ. And those two words, “in Christ” make all the difference in the world!  Because at baptism we were signed with the cross and claimed by Christ as his very own.  At baptism, God literally snatched us from the kingdom of darkness and death and transferred us into the Kingdom of Christ our Light and Life. This means that we do not belong to death. We belong to Christ!  This means that for the believing Christian death has been changed from a tragedy into a triumph!

And furthermore, our faith informs us that eventually this fuller life will include not just our immortal souls but also our glorified risen bodies! Because we belong the Christ and have become one with him in baptism, God who is all-powerful will raise us up just as he rose Christ up from the dead.   The New Testament assures us of this and informs us that we shall live a very real life in a very real place which the Bible calls “a new heaven and a new earth”.

It was this faith, this sure and certain hope of eternal life and resurrection, that enabled those 21 men kneeling on a Libyan beach to not be silent and afraid in the face of death, as are those who do not have faith.  With them we speak out with our voices and with our lives that we believe in the resurrection of the dead.  And we know that whatever we may have to endure for the sake of our fidelity to Jesus and his teachings in this world, is nothing compared to the glory, the joy and the total fulfilment awaiting us in the life to come.