复活的希望

丙年常年期第三十二主日

       

要解释痛苦的意义并不容易。从个人经历中，我们也发现很难解释痛苦——例如, 我们所爱的人会死于癌症，即使他是个很有爱心、并且是个虔诚的天主教徒；还有，即使我们每个主日都参加弥撒，也可能会面对经济困难、失业等等问题。许多人都认为，痛苦是因为受到惩罚。坏人受苦是因为天主惩罚他们；好人享受人生是因为得到天主的祝福。然而很多时候, 事情的发生并不是这样。

      

有时候，好人也会承受很大的痛苦和折磨，正如今天读经一中的七兄弟一样。 也许有些人会这么想 ——如果天主真的爱他们，为什么还要让他们受苦呢? 同样的，当我们生病或面对生活中的一些挫折时，常常都会责问天主为何不俯允我们的祈祷。我们不明白为什么天主不回应我们的祷告，特别是我们的祈祷是为他人的。

        

在人类的历史中，宗教和哲学家都尝试解释痛苦的意义。有些归痛苦于天主对罪恶的惩罚；有的则解释说痛苦是因为我们的行为和决定的后果；一些哲学家却说痛苦只是一种假象。虽然，这些解释都有它们的部分真实性和道理，但我却不认为任何宗教或哲学家能提供完整而又可以被接受的答案。这是因为痛苦本身就是一个奥秘，它指向一些更深的真理，直到我们死的那一天，这奥秘仍然没有解开。

       

身为基督徒，我们对痛苦有另一种理解—— 我们从复活的角度去明白痛苦。复活提醒我们死亡并不是一切的终结。复活的信心让我们看到痛苦只是短暂的；复活的信心使我们充满希望并有勇气承受人生的痛苦、失望、创伤和磨难；借着复活的信心，我们看到天主许下的承诺是生命而不是死亡。我们是否可以想象没有复活信心的生活呢? 这样的生活将是难以忍受的，尤其是当我们遇到困难和挫折的时候。若不相信复活，自我了断生命是最简单的解决方法.

      

不管我们在生命里经历过什么事情；不管我们遇到什么困难；我们要生活在复活的希望中。这希望就是圣保禄宗徒在读经二中所提到的：“主是信实的，祂必使你们坚强，保护你们不受魔鬼的侵害。”

      

让我们在这台弥撒中，求主赏赐我们恩宠，使我们继续相信天主无微不至地照顾我们。耶稣的复活是祂应许生命的方式。让我们继续信赖天主，因为 “祂是天主，祂不是死人的天主，而是活人的天主；在天主眼中，所有的人都是活着的。”

Til Death do us Part

Thirty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

What do Burhan Aspaf Belge, Conrad Hilton, George Sanders, Herbert Hutner, Joshua Josden Jr., Jack Ryan, Michael O’Hara, Felipe de Alba and Frederic Prinz von Anhalt all have in common? All nine men have been married to the same woman at some point in time— and, she is none other than Zsa Zsa Gabor. How’s that for trivia? OK, let’s try another  'Guess the bride'. Her list of husbands include; Conrad Hilton Jr., Michael Wilding, Mike Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton, Richard Burton again, John Warner, and Larry Fortensky. Anybody know? These were the eight marriages, but 7 husbands of Elizabeth Taylor. When people are married so many times, do you have a feeling that a lot of the wedding gifts came with the receipt for easy return or Refund? Today we are going to focus on a woman who only had seven marriages. She wasn’t a celebrity and in fact, she never even existed. The Sadducees created her as a hypothetical irrationality.

The Lord had just entered Jerusalem and the religious leaders are coming to Him to test him out as there were already rumours that He was the long-awaited Messiah. In today’s gospel, it is the turn of the Sadducees to do the testing. The Sadducees were an aristocratic and politically influential group who were aligned with the Roman overlords as well as having control of the high priesthood and the Sanhedrin. They disappeared from history after the Jewish rebellion in 66-70AD and what we know about their beliefs is limited, as we only know it from their opponents, who are usually not the most reliable witnesses. However, we do know that they did not believe in the resurrection or the afterlife which they considered to be new-fangled ideas of the Pharisees.

So the Sadducees went to seek Jesus' opinion on the matter of the resurrection and the afterlife. They pose a question based on the Old Testament provisions of what is known as levirate marriage where a brother married his dead brother's widow to provide a child for the dead brother. So they put forward an obviously academic and mildly ridiculous possibility of seven brothers marrying the same woman in due order and then dying without having any children. In reality, you have to imagine that by marriage number 4, someone would have been saying “Guys, I really don't think this is a good idea.” The tone of the question was sarcastic and was meant to belittle and make fun of the doctrine of the resurrection. Unfortunately for the Sadducees as they snicker, the Lord Jesus exposes the problem. They thought that they have just set the perfect trap for the Lord. But, He takes this opportunity to correct two major errors by stating that, there is a life to come and earthly marriage is not meant for it.

These Sadducees assume the resurrection will be a mere resuscitation, a return to bodily life as we currently experience it.  Jesus, however, points out that our risen bodies will be different from what they are now.  The answer provided by Jesus makes a clear distinction between the “children of this world” and those in “the other world.” In the former, people take wives and husbands but in the latter, they “do not marry.” Just by those two descriptions Jesus is telling us that this life is not like the next life; there is a contrast, things will not be the same. The differences are not just a matter of a resurrected body. The fundamental difference has to do with relationships, marriage in particular.

Throughout the history of interpretation, the passage above has caused no small amount of consternation for those seeking to be faithful in hope to God’s call on their lives. Here we have one of the very few teachings of Jesus about what the resurrection involves and yet it seems to foretell a reality that, quite honestly, terrifies many of us, especially happily married couples (though, it may come as a relief to those who feel trapped in an unhappy marriage). But the truth is, death ends marriage! That is why we say in weddings, “till death do us part.”

This notion, that marriage is not forever, seems to fly against the Church’s unwavering position that marriage is indissoluble and a great good which She never fails to defend. This is especially so when the Church teaches that marriage is not simply a necessary evil. Complete to the contrary: She teaches that it is profoundly good and beautiful, that its vocation is written in the very nature of man and woman, as they came from the hand of the Creator (CCC 1603), and that as a sacrament, it both signifies and communicates grace (CCC 1617).

Marriage is part of the design of God from the very beginning of creation, though, it is also an institution that is bound up with realities of mortal life.  Reproduction is necessary for any living organism because someday, we will die and we need to have replacements to carry on.  In heaven, however, we won’t need to worry about the survival of the species. But the reason why there would be no marriages after the resurrection, goes beyond such practical and scientific argumentation. It is the sacramental dimension of marriage. Human marriage is merely a reflection of the heavenly marriage between Christ and the Church. Heaven, the New Creation, the New Jerusalem, is the ultimate marriage of Christ and His people. All of our little marriages here on Earth are imperfect mirrors of the ultimate intimacy, the ultimate union, the ultimate oneness, the ultimate relationship – the Lord and His people. Once in heaven, the spouses will be perfectly bound together in Christ and there will be no more procreation or exclusive mutuality.

Whatever goodness and beauty we come to know here on earth through the sacrament of marriage will not be discarded as no longer necessary, neither will it be arbitrarily transferred or transmuted into something so wholly different that it is completely unrecognisable. We are promised a New Heavens and New Earth in Scripture—one in which, by the unfailing Love and grace of God, all of creation will finally attain to the perfection for which it was made (CCC 302). The newness suggests a beauty, freshness and goodness that is wholly incorrupt. Every sin, every source of suffering, of which even the best marriages have had their fair share, will be no more and every wound will be healed; the fulfilment of our vocation to marriage, will be perfectly realised only in heaven.

Will there be marriage at the resurrection? Not as we know it, and yet somehow, mysteriously, it won’t be lost at all. Everything we know to be good about marriage—the love we would have given and received, the union we would have forged and deepened with our spouses—will reach its perfection in Christ, in such a way that the very best of what we would have experienced, will, but seem a minuscule foretaste of an unfathomably extravagant gift. The resurrection will surely not be a disappointment in any way. The Marriage of Christ to His Church will be a blazing sunlight that outshines all the little candles of our current marriages.

So this is why we hold on to marriage even as it continues to be misunderstood and even though we struggle with the imperfections of all human relationships. Let us never forget that marriage is not just a social fabric or a physical union, it is a spiritual expression of the life to come. There is a time to bond and there is a time to part. We acknowledge that. But no Christian parts from each other without the hope of something even greater— the perfect marriage or the match made in heaven, where there will no longer be any separation, no longer any parting, and no longer would death rob us of the things and people whom we love.

死亡不是生命的结束

追思已亡节              

我们这个世代面对着一个很大的问题——很多人都已经忘了这俗世的生命只不过是永恒生命的准备。这是因为人们大致上忘记了天主，并觉得这一世才是重要的。每一个渴望都必须被满足、每一个难题一定要被解决、凡是不完美的必须被纠正或除掉。我们忘记了自己像是进展中的工程，最后的阶段唯有天主才能完成。

对这现世生活的迷恋将导致我们不想思考有关死亡的课题，最后甚至忘记了已经去世的人。很遗憾，我们只是一年一次才记起那些已亡的亲友。当这俗世的生活越安乐，就越怕面对死亡。我们忘记了天主，忘记了死亡其实并不是生命的结束，也忘记了我们的最后居所是在天乡，而不是在尘世。我们要记得：不管是我们对主耶稣的爱或是祂对我们的爱，都不会因为死亡而结束。耶稣为了让我们可以永远和祂在一起而死，祂的爱已战胜死亡。

然而，追思已亡只不过是我们今天要做的部分工作而已。因为如果我们单单是纪念亡者，那么今天的礼仪就仅仅是给生者的一种安慰。我们更需要为亡者祈祷，完全为炼狱的灵魂祈祷。如果亡者的灵魂已在天堂，他们已经不再需要我们的祈祷了。可是，如果是在地狱，那就可悲了，因为我们的祈祷已无法帮助他们。只有那些在炼狱的灵魂才需要我们的祈祷。我们为亡者奉献安息弥撒，特别是殡葬弥撒，还有今天追思已亡瞻礼的弥撒，都和炼狱的信念有关。我们相信，当一个人死了，基本上会盼望和天主在一起。若是灵魂上还有小罪，那么天主将先炼净他的灵魂。当这个炼净阶段完成后，洁净的灵魂就能分享天堂的福乐。因此，炼狱是灵魂被净化的阶段，使炼净的灵魂可以站立在天主的宝座前。

因此，正如现在我们常常互相代祷及彼此分担，在世的人可以透过祈祷和克苦帮助炼狱的灵魂。最好的祈祷不外是为他们奉献弥撒。我们知道，为炼灵祈祷将对他们有帮助，因为没有人可以独自生活、没有人能独自犯罪，也没有人可以独自被救赎，因为我们是一个基督奥体。所以，让我们牢牢记住圣安博的话：“生前我们爱他；死后别忘记他。”