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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Wednesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

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Gospel text (Mk 12,18-27): The Sadducees came to Jesus. Since they claim that there is no resurrection, they questioned him in this way, «Master, in the Scriptures Moses gave us this law: ‘If anyone dies and leaves a wife but no children, his brother must take the wife and give her a child who will be considered the child of his deceased brother’. Now, there were seven brothers. The first married a wife, but he died without leaving any children. The second took the wife (…). Last of all the woman died. Now, in the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife? For the seven had her as wife».

Jesus replied, «You could be wrong in this regard because you understand neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. When they rise from the dead, men and women do not marry but are like the angels in heaven. Now, about the resurrection of the dead, have you never reflected on the chapter of the burning bush in the book of Moses? God said to him: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’. Now, He is the God, not of the dead but of the living. You are totally wrong».

Heaven. The Sadducees’ error about Resurrection

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, with a clear twisted purpose, the Sadducees become the victims of the clumsy inconsistency of their methodology. First, their improper use of the Scriptures: to find a foundation for their erroneous beliefs, they seek internal contradictions in God’s Revelation. Secondly, they fall into the childish mistake to conceive Heaven with human images, subjecting its heavenly grandeur to earthly schemes.

In Christ ascended into Heaven, the human being has entered into intimacy with God in a new and unheard-of way; man henceforth finds room in God for ever. "Heaven": this word Heaven does not indicate a place above the stars but something far more daring and sublime: it indicates Christ himself, the divine Person who welcomes humanity fully and forever, the One in whom God and man are inseparably united forever.

—Man's being in God, this is Heaven. And we draw close to Heaven; indeed, we enter Heaven to the extent that we draw close to Jesus and enter into communion with him.