Daily Gospel Reflection
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November 19, 2022
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,
came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,
“Teacher, Moses wrote for us,
If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child,
his brother must take the wife
and raise up descendants for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers;
the first married a woman but died childless.
Then the second and the third married her,
and likewise all the seven died childless.
Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?
For all seven had been married to her.”
Jesus said to them,
“The children of this age marry and remarry;
but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming 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
because they are the ones who will rise.
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.”
Some of the scribes said in reply,
“Teacher, you have answered well.”
And they no longer dared to ask him anything.
I don’t spend much time thinking about what life will be like after I die. I know heaven will be better than anything I can imagine. I’m sure there will be some incredible surprises for all of us.
Jesus perceived the Sadduccees’ trapping question from today’s gospel and answered it well. He didn’t get caught up in their details but went straight to the essential: resurrection is real. Moses’ words prove it. Those who resurrect from the dead aren’t concerned with marriage. They are the children of God—death is no longer a concern for them.
How many deaths take place in an earthly lifetime? If you are given over to loving well, you know that it is many little ones as you strive to put others’ needs before your own. There are, of course, the more significant moments of death since no one can escape suffering or loss. And then, eventually, we will die our own physical death.
How wonderful to know that death, in any form, will no longer be a reality for us after we rise in the new, eternal life. I think that is good news for us as it was for the poor woman, widowed seven times. She had already died enough, losing seven husbands and being childless. Now she was living like an angel in the presence of the God of the living.
We have that blessed hope for us well.
Prayer
You are the God of the living. Don’t let me think otherwise, by lingering on futile questions that put that truth to the test. Without your vision of what is to come, I’m limited to what is and to letting so many things hold me back. Free me to go beyond my own limited understanding to the world to which you draw us more and more each day. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Raphael Kalinowski had a brilliant mind and a faithful heart that he used to spread the faith in Poland at the end of the 1800s. He survived ten years in a labor camp in Siberia before becoming a Carmelite priest.
He was born in 1835 to a noble family in Vilnius—his father taught mathematics and served as superintendent of the local boarding school for nobles. Raphael attended this school and graduated with honors in 1850.
Opportunities for further education were limited, so Raphael joined the Russian army that he might study at an engineering academy. He later was assigned as professor of mathematics at the academy, and helped to design railroads.
He was promoted to captain, but his heart was with the oppressed Poles of his homeland. He resigned from the army and joined resistance efforts, helping to lead a major uprising. He was captured and sentenced to die by firing squad. When his family intervened, Russian authorities feared that if they killed him, he would inspire more trouble as a political martyr. They sentenced him to ten years in a Siberian labor camp instead.
Over the course of nine months, he was forcibly marched to a labor camp in Siberia—many did not survive the journey, but Raphael had a hidden strength, and became a leader to other prisoners. He labored in salt mines there for ten years.
After his release, he returned to Poland, and became a tutor to the young prince, August Czartoryski. The prince suffered from tuberculosis, and Raphael accompanied him as he sought medical treatment and favorable climates; he had a profound influence on the young man’s life. The prince eventually became a priest and was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004.
Throughout his travels, Raphael became aware of the Russian persecution of the Church and of the people of his homeland. He entered a community of Carmelites in 1877 and was ordained a priest five years later. His leadership skills were recognized, and he was named superior of the community. He went on to found a number of new monasteries throughout Poland.
Raphael died of tuberculosis at the age of 72 in Wadowice, Poland—the same town in which Pope John Paul II was born in 14 years later. His tomb became a place of pilgrimage—so many people would take handfuls of dirt from his grave that the nuns who oversaw the cemetery had to continually replace the earth and plants there.
Pope John Paul II counted Raphael as one of his boyhood heroes, and canonized him a saint in 1991—the first member of this Carmelite community to be named a saint since its founder, St. John of the Cross.
St. Raphael Kalinowski, you were the hero of Pope John Paul II who survived a Siberian labor camp to spread the faith in Poland—pray for us!
Image Credit: Our featured image of St. Raphael Kalinowski is used with permission from Catholic Online. Last accessed October 18, 2024.