Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time Year 1 2023

Peter H. Davids

Ordinary Time • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

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The world seeks goals within this age, which even if they get are all lose at death. Antiochus IV sought money to pay off the tribute debt to Rome. The Sadducees only hope was offspring to carry on their name, so they thought they had Jesus caught in a reductio ad absurdum. Jesus calls us to place our only hope in being "children of the resurrection" and "children of God" that relativizes any this worldly hope. That should lead us to weep for those whose prosperity is only in this world, not to jealousy, to seek out the idols in our own life, and to welcome when the Lord strips them from us, for he is helping us attain our true goal as his children.

Notes

Transcript

Title

False Hopes True Hope

Outline

We all have hopes, often within this age

People hope to have a happy family, a prosperous career, a happy life. I saw the results of a survey in the US recently that indicated that to be happy and free of anxiety people on average think that they need a salary of $150,000 a year and something like $1.2 million in the bank. They have forgotten John D. Rockefeller’s adage that what one needed to be satisfied or happy was “a little more.”

In the evangelical world a pastor needs a growing or large church to be happy. And, of course, the adulation of his or her congregation and staff. But, of course, this is also all within this age and will never satisfy.

We have our this-age goals within the Catholic world. A Catholic scholar may be taken up with writing one more book or becoming more in demand as a speaker or perhaps an endowed chair. A priest may want to become a pastor, a dean, or, as a friend just suggested to me that I should desire, a Monsignor. Oh, dear, those are all within this age. What I desire, what I long for is to be a truly holy priest, but I know that that means the stripping away of many of those “other things” and that in the end I will be blind to my spiritual state - I will only know if when I see Him he says, well done.

So our readings give us two examples of false hope

Antiochus IV inherited from his father Antiochus III a tremendous debt to Rome, for the father har challenged Rome in Greece and had lost. Much of Antiochus IV’s behavior can be attributed to this need for tribute money - his attempt to conquer Egypt, his suppression of Judaism and desecration of the Temple, and now in our passage his final venture to rob temples in the East that failed. It was for the common good as well as his good, but it was for a material goal. And Mammon does not satisfy or make good on his bargains. We have the picture of Antiochus disappointed, disillusioned, even delusional (“Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.”) and losing it all at death in a foreign land.

The Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a reductio ad absurdum, a woman married to seven brothers in succession, following levirate law, who dies childless - neither she nor his husbands in the eyes of the Sadducees had hope for a future. They ridicule the resurrection asking whose wife she would be then, perhaps to produce the missing offspring.

Jesus turns their thinking upside down. “You are trying to transfer the goals and hopes of this age - which are no hopes - to that age.” Yet “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” Marriage and children are because of death (and the need to populate the earth to govern it). But in the age that is worth hoping for none of this is relevant: those worthy to attain it are like angels, are children of God themselves.”

What does that mean for us?

First, rather than being jealous of those who “get ahead” we should mourn for those of this world for whom that is all they have. For those who seem to rise in the Church realize that it means greater responsibility, not necessarily being greater in the eyes of God, so pray for them. Remember that we have Popes and Bishops whom we recognize as saints, and others whose eyes seemed to have been on this age and whom we wonder if they got into Purgatory.

Second, look within yourself for such false gods and goals. We want to do well, but the well is measured in faithfulness and obedience to God and may only be known after death.

Third, realize that God often strips us of our false goals and gods in this age, so welcome that and embrace humiliation as a gift, for it is a gift. We do not want to pursue goals like those of Antiochus and the Sadducees and end up at death discovering it was all a dead end. We want the purity of heart that is to seek one thing and that is God and see the stripping off of other things as an aid to attaining our hearts’ desire.

Readings

Catholic Daily Readings 11-25-2023: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

FIRST READING

1 Maccabees 6:1–13

1 As King Antiochus passed through the eastern provinces, he heard that in Persia there was a city, Elam, famous for its wealth in silver and gold, 2 and that its temple was very rich, containing gold helmets, breastplates, and weapons left there by the first king of the Greeks, Alexander, son of Philip, king of Macedon. 3 He went therefore and tried to capture and loot the city. But he could not do so, because his plan became known to the people of the city 4 who rose up in battle against him. So he fled and in great dismay withdrew from there to return to Babylon.

5 While he was in Persia, a messenger brought him news that the armies that had gone into the land of Judah had been routed; 6 that Lysias had gone at first with a strong army and been driven back; that the people of Judah had grown strong by reason of the arms, wealth, and abundant spoils taken from the armies they had cut down; 7 that they had pulled down the abomination which he had built upon the altar in Jerusalem; and that they had surrounded with high walls both the sanctuary, as it had been before, and his city of Beth-zur.

8 When the king heard this news, he was astonished and very much shaken. Sick with grief because his designs had failed, he took to his bed. 9 There he remained many days, assailed by waves of grief, for he thought he was going to die. 10 So he called in all his Friends and said to them: “Sleep has departed from my eyes, and my heart sinks from anxiety. 11 I said to myself: ‘Into what tribulation have I come, and in what floods of sorrow am I now! Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.’ 12 But I now recall the evils I did in Jerusalem, when I carried away all the vessels of silver and gold that were in it, and for no cause gave orders that the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed. 13 I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land.”

Catholic Daily Readings 11-25-2023: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

RESPONSE

Psalm 9:16a

16 The nations fall into the pit they dig;

in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.

PSALM

Psalm 9:2–4, 6, 16, 19

2 I will praise you, LORD, with all my heart;

I will declare all your wondrous deeds.

3 I will delight and rejoice in you;

I will sing hymns to your name, Most High.

4 When my enemies turn back,

they stumble and perish before you.

6 You rebuked the nations, you destroyed the wicked;

their name you blotted out for all time.

16 The nations fall into the pit they dig;

in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught.

19 For the needy will never be forgotten,

nor will the hope of the afflicted ever fade.

Catholic Daily Readings 11-25-2023: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

GOSPEL ACCLAMATION

2 Timothy 1:10

10 but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,

GOSPEL

Luke 20:27–40

27 Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him, 28 saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. 30 Then the second 31 and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. 37 That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; 38 and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” 39 Some of the scribes said in reply, “Teacher, you have answered well.” 40 And they no longer dared to ask him anything.

Notes

Catholic Daily Readings 11-25-2023: Saturday of the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2023 | ORDINARY TIME

SATURDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

YEAR 1 | ROMAN MISSAL | LECTIONARY

On the same date: Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Virgin and Martyr

First Reading 1 Maccabees 6:1–13

Response Psalm 9:16a

Psalm Psalm 9:2–4, 6, 16, 19

Gospel Acclamation 2 Timothy 1:10

Gospel Luke 20:27–40

GREEN or WHITE for BVM on Sat

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