32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Both the Old Testament book of Maccabees and the Gospel of Luke speak about life after death: Resurrection. The seven sons put to death, their mother reminds us, have the hope of Resurrection and Jesus speaks to the Sadducees, who do not believe in Resurrection.

Our readings witness that we believe in life after death, but we don’t believe our life in God begins beyond the grave.

We believe in a God of the living and that means we are called to be alive, fully alive in God now, today! And we are fully alive in God when we live the life of God.

Go back to the seven brothers and their mother. They were alive, fully alive to God long before they died and experience the Resurrection for three good reasons: they believed, they hoped and they loved.

First to be fully alive in God is to believe. To believe what only faith can believe: Think for a moment what we are called to believe as true. A Jew crucified as a common criminal on a cross was and is God’s only Son, or when water is poured over us, at Baptism we are filled with the presence of God.

When our tongues or hands cradle what looks like bread, it is the body of Christ that enters our lives.

Our faith is at its best when we surrender to God mind and heart, doubt and questions passion and power. That is what it is like to be alive to God.

Second, to live in God means we hope, confidently expecting that wherever we are, regardless of our problem, God is there, not always with answers but always with a presence; to live with the expectation that your life and mine does not end in six feet under but will never end, that you and I will always be.

Third, alive in God means we love. Now humans toss around the word, “love” like dies on a craps table.

It covers everything from “together till death” to the food I love. But because God is so generous, we really can love as Jesus loved, nothing held back, our whole person on fire, consumed for the other, to discover the ecstasy God knew in His love for us.

Genuine love may be difficult to find, but it is dang easy to recognize.

You see it in the Maccabees mother of seven, in Mary beneath her son’s cross, in a woman named Mother Teresa asking for every single one of the world’s unwanted infants. It is seen in millions of moms and dads enraptured by their child.

We love as Jesus did when we refused to be caught up in our own world and, notice someone dying from loneliness, someone waiting, depending on us to realize there is something more important than ball games and stock portfolios, what the hottest song or movie, or fashion or style.

When we love as Jesus did, we become alive! Fully alive in God when we realize that our life really only has meaning when we realize that another’s life is meaningful.

Realizing that only when I touch another, am I touched by God.

Resurrection, life after death is a great gift the Lord promises us, but it only comes to those who knows what it means to have a life before death, a life filled with every moment with the presence of God.

Sunday Mass begins at 11 a.m. with the Sacrament of Reconciliation at 10:15 a.m.

Come pray with us at St. Michael Catholic Church located at 1004 W. Gentry in Henryetta.