The Death of Antiochus

Homily for Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

The First Book of Maccabees tells of the end of King Antiochus, the ruler who was behind the attempts to make the people of Israel more like the people of Greece. Antiochus dies after hearing of the successful revolt in Judah and he dies in a foreign land – apt punishment for the many sins of oppression committed during his life. It fits well with our sense of justice when an oppressive tyrant comes to a bad end or loses everything. However, we know that such injustice in this world is not guaranteed and some tyrants die comfortably and luxuriously amid their ill-gotten prizes and possessions.

At the same time, the poor, the oppressed, the starving, and the most unfortunate of our world often live and die in misery and hardship. They are the thousands who are killed or at least bereaved by earthquakes and natural disasters. After the Israelites noticed repeatedly in their history that God’s justice was not by any means always served in this world, the Hebrew people came to believe by the time of Christ that there was an afterworld in which all was righted. Part of that belief, of course, was belief in resurrection. That the belief was not accepted by all his apparent in the way the Sadducees attempted to make fun of it with their question to Jesus in today’s Gospel text.

In our world, belief in resurrection, heaven, and hell is often greeted with condescension as a bit childish and, at least, wishful thinking. “It’s too good to be true,” they think. However, justice cries out for another life. A central belief for us Christians is that God does not abandon or forget the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, the have-nots, nor even the simply conscientious people we all know.

“He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” With this answer, Jesus sets aside the foolish question that is posed in mockery. The Sadducees attack the notion of the resurrection by posing a question to Jesus about the Levirate law that is found in the Book of Deuteronomy. Jesus’ answer is that God is outside of time and space and that the children of God will live forever. We were created to be immortal, but our immortality was ruined by sin. By his passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus restores our immortality.

Every time that we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, he shares himself with us so that we may truly live as he lived. Let us ask our Eucharistic Lord to live in us now, so that we might abide with him forever.