Daily Retreat 11/25/06
2006 Nov 25 Sat: Ordinary Weekday/ BVM/ Catherine of Alexandria, v, mt
Rv 11: 4-12/ Ps 143(144): 1b. 2. 9-10/ Lk 20: 27-40
From today’s readings: “I, John, heard a voice from Heaven speak to me: Here are my two witnesses.... Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!... He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive.”
The Tragedy of the Closed Book
The whole point of divine revelation is to give man the advantages of God’s perspective. The more we know about salvation history, the more sense it makes to follow God’s plan. The better we know the will of God, the more we can live our lives in accordance with it. The more we listen to God’s word, the better we can understand mysteries about life and death.
The Sadducees who approached Jesus with their question about marriage and resurrection assumed a fundamental incompatibility between earthly and heavenly life. Since they were experiencing earthly life, they knew that was real, but since the Torah said little on the matter and they hadn’t experienced life after death, they simply concluded it was impossible to do so.
But for all that, the Sadducees were not material atheists - they were actually devout Jews, who recognized the one true God as the creator of the universe, and even recognized the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, as the Word of God. But their faith wasn’t broad enough to transcend the limits of their own experience and their narrow view of Scripture.
That’s why Jesus directed the Sadducees’ attention to God’s self-introduction to Moses (cf. Chapter Three of Exodus), for what credit would God have had in presenting Himself as God of lifeless patriarchs of a bygone era? Jesus was attempting to lead the Sadducees to see things from God’s perspective, as God had also once taught Moses to do. So, far from urging the Sadducees to suspend their reasoning, Jesus was merely showing them how best to apply it! But that meant they had to get beyond their preconceived notions and mistaken understandings.
Although no longer primarily concerned with the question about resurrection, the closed attitude of the Sadducees is actually alarmingly common today among Christians of all walks of life. For, all too often, modern Christians have a rather stunted familiarity with Scripture and inadequate or even erroneous catechesis. So, instead of benefitting from the full illumination of divine revelation and learning to see things from God’s perspective, they merely mix their fumbling faith with best guesses based on their limited life experience; then, like the Sadducees, they justify their conclusions with convoluted conjectures - which sadly prove nothing except for their sorry ignorance of God’s revealed perspective!
Rv 11: 4-12/ Ps 143(144): 1b. 2. 9-10/ Lk 20: 27-40
From today’s readings: “I, John, heard a voice from Heaven speak to me: Here are my two witnesses.... Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!... He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive.”
The Tragedy of the Closed Book
The whole point of divine revelation is to give man the advantages of God’s perspective. The more we know about salvation history, the more sense it makes to follow God’s plan. The better we know the will of God, the more we can live our lives in accordance with it. The more we listen to God’s word, the better we can understand mysteries about life and death.
The Sadducees who approached Jesus with their question about marriage and resurrection assumed a fundamental incompatibility between earthly and heavenly life. Since they were experiencing earthly life, they knew that was real, but since the Torah said little on the matter and they hadn’t experienced life after death, they simply concluded it was impossible to do so.
But for all that, the Sadducees were not material atheists - they were actually devout Jews, who recognized the one true God as the creator of the universe, and even recognized the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, as the Word of God. But their faith wasn’t broad enough to transcend the limits of their own experience and their narrow view of Scripture.
That’s why Jesus directed the Sadducees’ attention to God’s self-introduction to Moses (cf. Chapter Three of Exodus), for what credit would God have had in presenting Himself as God of lifeless patriarchs of a bygone era? Jesus was attempting to lead the Sadducees to see things from God’s perspective, as God had also once taught Moses to do. So, far from urging the Sadducees to suspend their reasoning, Jesus was merely showing them how best to apply it! But that meant they had to get beyond their preconceived notions and mistaken understandings.
Although no longer primarily concerned with the question about resurrection, the closed attitude of the Sadducees is actually alarmingly common today among Christians of all walks of life. For, all too often, modern Christians have a rather stunted familiarity with Scripture and inadequate or even erroneous catechesis. So, instead of benefitting from the full illumination of divine revelation and learning to see things from God’s perspective, they merely mix their fumbling faith with best guesses based on their limited life experience; then, like the Sadducees, they justify their conclusions with convoluted conjectures - which sadly prove nothing except for their sorry ignorance of God’s revealed perspective!
posted by FrPitstick | 11/22/2006
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