Among the several things that caught my attention during my
visit to the Mount of Olives (the Garden of Gethsemane being my favorite) was a
prominent feature that covers the entire western and almost all of the southern
slopes of the mount—the Jewish cemetery. From what I gathered, since antiquity Jewish
burial continued to be done there interrupted only between 1948 and 1967 when
Jerusalem was divided. According to
tradition, the Jewish cemetery on the sacred mount is where the resurrection
will begin when the Messiah comes. Legend has it that in the end of days
people will tunnel underground from all over the world to rise up there.
For a believer in the “God of the living,” death is seen in
the light of hope for the triumph of life. Mount Olives has become a symbol of that hope
for resurrection.
Jewish belief in the afterlife was a late development in
Israel. The earliest afterlife belief of
a promise of resurrection appears in the book of Daniel written in the second
century before Christ. Today’s first reading from the second book of Maccabees
(2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14) is also a second century B.C. writings. It expresses the belief
in afterlife as vindication of those who have been faithful to God.
Today’s first reading is an excerpt of the story of the
heroism of the mother and her seven martyred sons. The faith-filled family was
persecuted by the Seleucid king for their faith in God. They were forced to eat pork in violation of
God’s law. All of the sons resisted to the end, professing before death their fidelity
to God and their hope for resurrection. The fourth son, for instance, when
nearing death after being tortured said: “It
is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised
up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life” (2 Mc 7:14).
The willingness of all the sons to endure torture and death
depended on their belief in subsequent resurrection of the righteous.
On the contrary, the Sadducees did not believe in
resurrection as they only adhered to the Pentateuch and refused to give weight
to oral tradition. Hence, in the gospel reading (Lk 20:27-38), the Sadducees
presented a ridiculous case to Jesus to press him on the afterlife issue. The case is based on a teaching of the Book
of Moses on the responsibility of a man to marry his deceased brother’s widow
and bear progeny to his name. By
presenting the case of a widow who married the seven brothers who each died
without leaving a progeny, the Sadducees wanted to illustrate to Jesus the
implausibility of resurrection, as there would be confusion as to whose wife will
she be.
In his reply, Jesus did two things: First, He asserted the
vast difference between our experience in earthly life and that of the
afterlife. One cannot compare the two.
The resurrected life cannot be understood in terms of our earthly experience as
the Sadducees were trying to do. The
afterlife is far superior to our earthly experience, as Jesus attested: “… those who are deemed worthy to attain to
the coming of age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they
are the children of God…” (v. 34).
Second, Jesus clearly upheld the belief in resurrection by
citing Yahweh’s relationship to the three patriarchs. Only life would continue
to bind the patriarchs to God after their death: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the
bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead , but of the living, for to him all are
alive” (vv. 37-38). God is the source of all life; He is the cause of
resurrected life.
Our Christian invitations:
Invitation to gratitude.
God is not the God of the dead. He is the God of the living. We must always be
grateful to the source of life. We can do this by taking good care of our lives,
by celebrating life, by our commitment to promote and protect life. Our earthly
life is passing. But “no longer must we fear and disguise the reality of death.
We will die, but live ever more fully in Christ” (PCPC II #2059).
Invitation to hope.
A clear grasp of the afterlife is not possible. Any attempt to describe it and
to discuss its details is futile for it is always beyond the terms of our
earthly experience. Yet our faith in Jesus allows us to cling to this beautiful
belief as our hope for a future superior existence as children of God. It is this hope that we should bring into our
world which is always on the verge of despair because of the violence of
conflict and war, of the devastations wrought by earthquakes and supertyphoons,
of the suffering due to destitution, of fear and insecurities due to sickness. It is the hope of transformation.
Invitation to
fidelity. Good people many times suffer a lot. Those who are on the side of
justice and truth are persecuted by the evil of this world. All the more that,
as disciples of Christ, we should continue to be faithful to His words by
announcing his message of salvation and by denouncing whatever is evil in God’s
sight. We must fear not. God is on our
side. Resurrection is God’s vindication
of those who have been faithful to him.
Should the legend about Mount of Olives come to pass, let us
be among those deemed worthy to rise up there.
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