A funeral home asked a young priest if he would have a graveside service for a homeless man who had no family or friends. The funeral director explained that it was a brand new cemetery out in the countryside; this man was the first to be buried there. The young priest did not know this area very well. As he drove out into the countryside, trying to follow the directions given to him, he became lost. He couldn’t find his location on the GPS. There was no one around where he could ask directions. He was relieved when he found the cemetery about an hour later. The back hoe was there and the crew was taking a break. The hearse and the people from the funeral home were nowhere around. The new priest apologized to the workers for being so late. As he looked into the open grave, it appeared that the vault containing the casket was already in place. He asked if the workers would gather around him in prayer to pay their respects. He said he would not keep them long. The workers gathered around. The young priest poured out his heart in his prayers. A couple of the workers voiced their approval, saying “Praise the Lord,” and “Alleluia.” When the short prayer service was over, the young priest thanked the workers and started to walk to his car. He overheard one of the workers say: “I have never experienced anything like that in my life. And I’ve been installing septic systems for more than 20 years!”
Thankfully I have never made the mistake of giving a graveside service for a sceptic tank, at least not that I know of. Today’s readings getting us to thinking about the resurrection and eternal life, which is appropriate during November, the month of remembrance, and with just a few weeks before we begin a new liturgical year. We’ve just celebrated All Saints Day and All Souls Day, lifting up our prayers for the faithful departed and for those souls in the process of purification in purgatory. As Christians, we place our hope in the resurrection, in the eternal life we have in Christ, so we might ask ourselves: Why would Jesus get questions about the resurrection and eternal life from his fellow Jews? We hear a lot about the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Scripture, but perhaps we don’t know a lot of background about them. The Pharisees were a religious group that did not have political ambition. They accepted both the Torah and the prophets, but they also relied heavily on the Tradition that was passed down to them, just as in our Catholic faith Tradition is important to us as well. Observing the letter of the law was important to the Pharisees. They placed their hope in the coming of the Messiah. Even though the word “resurrection” does not appear in the Torah, their Sacred Scripture, thoughts supporting that concept are found there, so the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead.
The Pharisees were different than the Sadducees in many aspects. They were a group of wealth and power. With nearly all the priests being members of the Sadducees, the Sadducees controlled the Temple worship. The Sadducees only accepted the Pentateuch - the first 5 books of Hebrew Scripture - as authoritative. They rejected the oral tradition accepted by the Pharisees and did not give as much importance to the teachings of the prophets. The Sadducees did not believe in the coming of the Messiah. In addition, they rejected the idea of the resurrection, because it was not found directly in the Torah. So, the Sadducees are the ones who question the idea of the resurrection to Jesus, posing this really absurd situation to Jesus, asking him to explain it. The resurrection is such an important part of what we believe in our Catholic faith. We profess this belief in different ways in the prayers at mass, such as in the memorial acclamation when we profess: “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again.” So even though we don’t question the resurrection the way the Sadducees do in today’s Gospel, perhaps we also are not living fully in the light of the resurrection in our daily lives here on earth. All of us as Catholics can name a lot of martyrs who have died for our faith. We can name those who have done great things for the faith. But as St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta and St Therese of the Little Flower have reminded us many times, doing the little things in our daily lives as acts of love and charity flowing out of our faith are what will mark us as Christians. I think of those who are always there working in the kitchen in the CLC, lovingly preparing meals for whatever event we have. I think of the little army of worker bees who come and clean the church every Sunday afternoon once the Spanish mass is over. There was a young man from our Hispanic community who almost single-handedly planted all those juniper bushes in the hot sun under the bridge to the CLC to help fight off the erosion of that hill. The resurrection of Christ can be present in our lives in a lot of ways.
And the resurrection of Christ can be present to us in a brave action of hope. Back in 1982, Vice President George Bush represented the U.S. at the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev, who had served as the head of the government of Soviet Union for 18 years. Since the Soviet Union does not exist as a country anymore, many of our youth may not realize that as a Communist country, the Soviet Union did not allow any type of public religious expression. Yet, as the funeral was coming to an end, Bush was touched by what he saw. Brezhnev’s widow, Viktoria, stood by the coffin. As the soldiers touched the lid in order to close it, Mrs. Brezhnev reached down and made the sign of the cross on her husband’s chest. What an amazing act of Christian courage and hope this was in a country where practicing the Christian faith was illegal. In this action, she expressed the hope that this earthly life was not the end, but rather that there would be an eternal life that is promised to us by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this act of making the sign of the cross, Mrs. Brezhnev was placing her hope that Jesus would have mercy on her husband’s soul. May all of us place our hope in the resurrection.
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