Daily Gospel Reflection
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November 25, 2023
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.
November brings us to the conclusion of the church’s liturgical year. It’s a month of
remembrance of the dead and the celebration of the civil holiday of Thanksgiving, which
taps into the essence of our spiritual and psychological good health. It prompts a fitting
embrace of gratitude and encourages us to reflect on how God loves us and guides us, much like God watched over Father Sorin and his band of brothers as this heavily forested area became Notre Dame—181 years ago tomorrow!
One cannot imagine the hostility Jesus faced in this passage from Luke. Not accepting the resurrection, the Sadducees were intent on entrapping Jesus regarding life after death. They posed an absurd scenario to him. We may miss the subtlety in Jesus’ answer: Jesus refers to an authority the Sadducees could not fault, Moses.
Jewish tradition asserted that the Pentateuch originated from Moses. Jesus reminds them of Moses at the burning 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.” Jesus wisely challenged the Sadducees to accept the teaching about the resurrection of the dead.
So, what do we hear today through this gospel? Reading several commentaries on this
passage from Luke, I saw that nearly every text referred to the phrase “a God of life.” With so much in the world that illuminated death in his time, Jesus declared “a God of life” in the face of such death.
In too many ways, we might say that our era also illuminates death. Through this short proclamation in a larger context, “a God of life” is an anchor to the hopefulness and peace that we “children of God” hold in our beings. For our part, during these days that transition from lessons of the end of time to Advent to Christmas in eight short weeks, we carry the assurance of God conquering death.
Prayer
You are the God of the living. Don’t let us think otherwise by lingering on futile questions that put that truth to the test. Without your vision of what is to come, we are limited to what is and to letting so many things hold us back. Free us to go beyond our limited understanding of the world to which you draw us more and more each day. Amen.
Saint of the Day
St. Catherine of Alexandria is a patron saint of students of philosophy because she went toe-to-toe with the greatest minds of her age, and converted them to Christianity at the tender age of eighteen.
Very little of her life is known with certainty. The chief story that has been handed down to us reports that Catherine was born into a well-to-do family living in Alexandria at the beginning of the fourth century, and dedicated her life to education. Her studies led her to consider the truth about Christianity, and when she received a vision of Mary holding the child Jesus, she converted to the faith.
When the emperor Maxentius began persecuting Christians, Catherine visited him and rebuked his decision, even though she was just a teenager. Catherine began to argue with the emperor in defense of Christianity. Maxentius could not respond to Catherine’s arguments, so he gathered fifty learned philosophers to oppose her. When her reasoning converted them, Maxentius was enraged. He tried to seduce her and make her part of his court, but she refused and was beaten and imprisoned.
She continued to convert people who came to visit her in prison, including Maxentius' wife, and so Catherine was condemned to die upon a spiked wheel. When she was placed upon it, her hands were miraculously freed and the wheel shattered. She was then beheaded.
Catherine is often depicted with the broken wheel, as in the portrait above, which hangs in the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Another depiction of Catherine, the copper relief seen below, is from the chapel in the Fischer Graduate Residences community center. Catherine's wheel can be viewed in the lower right-hand corner. A few of Catherine's relics rest in the reliquary chapel in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus.
When Joan of Arc received messages from heaven, it was Catherine’s voice that she heard. St. Catherine of Alexandria is a patron saint of philosophers, preachers, students—particularly women studying in higher education, and those who work with wheels or mills.
St. Catherine of Alexandria, patron saint of students and Christian philosophers—pray for us!
Image Credit: Bernardino Luini (Italian, ca. 1480-ca. 1532), St. Catherine of Alexandria, late 15th/early 16th century, oil on panel. Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Fred J. Fisher, 1951.004.004.