New Deal, New Game

November 22: Saturday of Week 33 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Revelation 11:4-12; Psalm 144:1, 2, 9-10; Luke 20:27-40

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.

Thoughts to help us take responsibility as stewards of the kingship of Christ.

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life ... Step Five )

New Deal, New Game

“Our Savior has brought life to light.”

In the Gospel, Jesus is not just answering the Sadducees. He is giving hope—and an answer—to everyone dealing with insoluble problems on earth.

The Sadducees’ projection of life after death was based on the assumption that what they had to work with in the present would remain unchanged. Jesus said everything would be different: people, marriage, the body, physical and personal relationships. The problems will not exist, because the players will be different.

This answers both our fear of change and our dread that nothing will change. We imagine ourselves, unchanged, experiencing things in the future the way we experience them today. We resist giving up something—alcohol, drugs, affluence, prestige, some teaching or practice in the Church—because we can’t imagine a change in us that would make us no longer want it.

But Paul testifies: “I regard everything I have lost as rubbish because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). The truth is, “Our Savior Jesus Christ has brought life to light through the Gospel” (Alleluia verse; 2Timothy 1:10), and under his new light we see and feel things differently. Our desires change.

That is why “good stewards of the multi-faceted grace of God” are always “bringing out of their storeroom new things as well as old” (Matthew 13:52).

PRAY: “Lord, give me a taste for your new wine.”

PRACTICE: To live fully, change frequently (Blessed John Henry Newman).