Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 6 November 2016

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

We get off lightly with the selected passage of 2 Maccabees 7. The full story of the Mother and her seven sons is pretty horrific, the tortures they undergo are appalling, as each one is being killed the rest have to watch and listen, each giving praise to God and proclaiming hope in eternal life! Before the seventh dies the Mother speaks, urging him to keep strong in his faith and not be afraid: 'Give up your life willingly and prove yourself worthy of your brothers, so that by God's mercy I may receive you back with them at the resurrection'. (2 MC 24) It is a remarkable story of fidelity and hope in the face of extreme cruelty.

In this tale we can recognise the ever-present cruelty of human beings to each other and creation, a story repeated countless times in our history, still with us today in the actions of some who would kill others for holding beliefs different to their own. We are all tinged with this, how many of us can honestly say that they are free from prejudice in some way or another? Paul helps us, he knows well what we are all capable of if left unrestrained, yet for him God's grace and love shift the balance: 'encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word.' (2 Thess 2:16)

This is at the heart of the Maccabees story - with God's merciful love and help things become very different for each of us, the power Christ's resurrection enters into our lives, this hope challenges and transforms us. We experience the transfiguration of Jesus, who shares our life and draws us closer to himself. Is that fanciful? I certainly don't think so, the covenantal relationship we enter into from that moment of our baptism makes us God's own people with an eternal perspective.

I think this is what is at the heart of Luke's Gospel about the seven brothers and marriage (Lk 20: 27-38). The question the Sadducees put to Jesus about relationships in the Kingdom of heaven shows them to have little concept of new life in God. Jesus is clear, everything is changed in the resurrection of the dead, in the Kingdom all relationships begin and end with God, there is no need for marriage that belongs to life here and now, for in the Kingdom it is love that lasts and binds us with each other as brothers and sisters, children of the Living God.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Catholic Chaplain for the Melkites in the UK. He is also an Ecumenical Canon of Christ Church Oxford