"Like angels in Heaven."
My Dearest Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
In the time of Jesus, there were many factions of Jews, kind of like our various Christian Denominations of today. There were the Sadducees, the Pharisees and the Esseens, to name a few. The various groups had a fundamental Jewish background, but some of the core beliefs differed between the groups. For example, the Sadducees did not believe in life after death or the resurrection. They did not have the hope of eternal life in heaven with our Lord as we Christians so deeply cherish. They did not believe in the untouchable or the unseeable. How sad it must have been to be a Sadducee believing that this life was all there was and no hope for eternity with God in Heaven. In today’s Gospel (Mark 12:18-27), the Sadducees are challenging Jesus. They question him about the story of a women who marries a man and he dies before they can consummate the marriage. According to Jewish law, his brother was to take on his responsibility to make sure that she bore children. So the next brother married the woman and he died. This happened seven times. After each marriage, the brother died and she had yet to consummate the marriage. After the final marriage, she also died. So they asked Jesus, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife." Jesus replied, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living." This is our hope and our salvation that our God is with us while we are on earth and when we are resurrected into heaven. This is the glory that was given us through the resurrection of Jesus at Easter and his eventual ascension into Heaven. Even though we have not seen nor touched Heaven, God reveals Heaven to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the formation of our belief which leads us to our faith. Without faith all we have is emptiness. Heaven is one of those mystical things that is virtually impossible to comprehend. On earth, we only get to see fragments of the Heaven we will celebrate after our earthly journey is finished.
A Simple Prayer
Lord Father of heaven and Earth
Open my eyes to see your majesty,
Open my ears to hear your grace fall on me; and
Open my heart to feel the glory of God in his creation
For I long for the heavenly bliss and unending life with You.
Yours in Christ Michael Marcon
An Interesting Fact
On this day in 1134, St Norbert passed away. While not officially the Saint of the Day, the Magnificat identifies St. Norbert as a special person. I think many of the traits of St. Norbert flowed down into our own Father Norbert. It would be nice if you could send Father Norbert a little email letting him know that today is his Saint’s day and that we are thinking of him. What better way to grow the
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