PRI Reflections on Scripture | Memorial of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr

Join Msgr. Don Fischer as he reads and delivers a short reflection on today’s gospel, followed by 3 1/2 minutes of contemplative music and a closing prayer. Msgr. Don hopes that today’s reflection on the gospel will empower you to carry the Word in your heart throughout the day.

Choose either the video or audio below.

Gospel

Luke 20:27-40

Some Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, approached Jesus with a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise descendants for him. There were seven brothers, and the first married a woman but died childless; the second and third married her as well, and so on until all seven died childless, and finally the woman died. At the resurrection, whose wife will she be, since all seven had married her?” Jesus replied that the children of this age marry and remarry, but those deemed worthy to attain the coming age and the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage; they can no longer die, for they are like angels and are children of God because they will rise. He added that Moses himself revealed that the dead rise in the passage about the bush, when he called the Lord the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for God is not the God of the dead but of the living, for to him all are alive. Some scribes responded, “Teacher, you have answered well,” and from then on they no longer dared to question him.

Reflection

One of the things that Jesus brought into consciousness in his story as it unfolds in the New Testament, is how we have to go beyond the logical, beyond the ordinary, enter the world of mysticism and mystery. And in this particular passage, it seems to me that the Sadducees are using their minds, and Jesus inviting people to live not so much in your mind, but in a heart relationship with God, an intimacy with him.

Where the promise is, nothing will harm you and you will always live. Nothing can destroy you.

Closing Prayer

Father, bless us with the confidence that comes from knowing who you really are. Help us not to ever doubt that your plan for us is that we grow, we evolve, we become more who we are and we ultimately live with you forever. And we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Kyle Cross