Nov. 10, 2013: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary C
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to Jesus, 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 but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.”
THE WIDOW of one of my best friends calls regularly to tell me how much she misses him, and inevitably she will break down in tears. After more than two years nothing is more important to her than the assurance that she and her husband will one day be together in heaven. She asks if I believe they will be, and I assure her it is so. The tender prayers at the funeral Mass remind us again and again, “We shall be reunited.”
We know that some of the persons dearest to Jesus were widows and orphans because, like the poor, they had, in Jesus’ culture, no one on whom to depend but God. The gospel today has the ring of theological debate, an argument over the truth of resurrection, but for the grieving among us the need now is not orthodoxy of dogma but compassion, a shoulder that absorbs tears, an ear that listens to funny old stories and laughs again and again, a friend who allows another’s grief its own dignity and time. My friend is just one of so many left behind at the hands of war, street violence, a flood or fire, an illness—it really doesn’t matter. There are so many who feel abandoned.
–Father Larry Janowski, O.F.M.
THE WIDOW of one of my best friends calls regularly to tell me how much she misses him, and inevitably she will break down in tears. After more than two years nothing is more important to her than the assurance that she and her husband will one day be together in heaven. She asks if I believe they will be, and I assure her it is so. The tender prayers at the funeral Mass remind us again and again, “We shall be reunited.”
We know that some of the persons dearest to Jesus were widows and orphans because, like the poor, they had, in Jesus’ culture, no one on whom to depend but God. The gospel today has the ring of theological debate, an argument over the truth of resurrection, but for the grieving among us the need now is not orthodoxy of dogma but compassion, a shoulder that absorbs tears, an ear that listens to funny old stories and laughs again and again, a friend who allows another’s grief its own dignity and time. My friend is just one of so many left behind at the hands of war, street violence, a flood or fire, an illness—it really doesn’t matter. There are so many who feel abandoned.
–Father Larry Janowski, O.F.M.
