Each person’s decision
Jesus was not given to speaking much about eternal life. He has no intention of fooling anybody by making fanciful descriptions about life beyond death. His whole life, however, awakens hope. He goes through life relieving people’s suffering and freeing them from fear. His complete trust in God is contagious. His passion is to make everyone’s life happier and more human, just as the Father of all wants life to be.
The conviction that sustains and animates Jesus’ whole life comes forth only when a group of Sadducees approaches him with the idea of ridiculing faith in the resurrection. It is the conviction of the heart that believes that God “is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
His faith is simple. It is true we mourn our loved ones because we lose them here on earth when they die. But Jesus cannot even imagine that they could be dead to God, these children of his whom he loves so much. It’s not possible. God shares his life with them because he has received them into his unfathomable love.
The disturbing characteristic of our time is the crisis of hope. We have lost the horizon of an ultimate Future and the little hopes of this life do not comfort us in the end. Empty of hope, people in sufficient number are becoming distrustful of life. Nothing is worth it. Hence, total nihilism is easy to come by.
During these times of hopelessness, aren’t we all, believers and non-believers alike, asked to raise the most basic questions we carry within us? This God that many doubt, whom not a few have abandoned and whom many continue to ask for, isn’t he ultimately the foundation on which to rest for support our basic trust in life? At the end of all roads, at the very depth of all our longings, deep inside our inquiries and struggles, isn’t God there as the ultimate Mystery of salvation that we keep looking for?
Our faith is just being left there, in a corner somewhere inside us, as something not too important, not worth taking care of any longer during these times. Is it really so? Surely, it is not easy to believe, and it is hard not to believe. Meanwhile, the ultimate mystery of life seeks a clear and responsible answer.
This answer is a matter of personal decision. Do I want to erase from my life all final hope beyond death as wishful thinking that is not helpful to life? Do I want to remain open to the ultimate Mystery of existence, trusting that one will find there the answer, the acceptance and the fullness human beings are looking for right now?
José Antonio Pagola
November 10, 2013 32 Ordinary Time (C) Luke 20, 27-38