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From Fr. Shea

In our Gospel reading from the first Sunday of November, we hear a very disingenuous question from the Sadducees. These Sadducees do not even believe in the resurrection and yet they are asking this clearly ridiculous question. It appears that they are trying to make a mockery of Jesus, but there is actually something much more sinister at work in their hearts: they are trying to get him to criticize Moses. They think that they will have the ammunition that they need against him when he disagrees with Moses. Jesus, of course, is not going to fall into their trap. Because Moses indeed wrote this in the Book of Deuteronomy the Sadducees had come to believe that there was no resurrection. The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible as important scripture. They felt that if there was a resurrection then why would the deceased brother need to have children. I believe that Moses wrote this for the protection of the widow so that she could have standing in the community. Jesus wins the argument with a two-pronged approach. The first is that Sadducees do not believe in the afterlife because they cannot imagine a different reality. They can only envision a world similar to the one that they know here on earth. Jesus teaches them that life after the resurrection is fundamentally different than our life on earth. Marriage and remarriage are necessities of life on earth. Reproduction is needed here where we struggle for our daily bread. In heaven with God, we will not have that struggle. He tells us that those of us who are deemed worthy are the children of God and there will be a different reality there. There is an important point Jesus makes... READ FULL PDF