Welcome to read
homilies for the Sundays of the year. These are sample homilies which you can
read with devotion. You may use them in your own homilies without asking my
permission. You may also change or edit these to fit them to your audience. A
unique quality of these homilies is that they are Christ-filled. From beginning
to end they present to us some aspect of Jesus so that beholding his glory we
“are being transformed from glory to glory into his very image” (2 Corinthians
3:18 NAB).
The Last Married Man
The readings today tell us something about the resurrection from
the dead. The first reading explicitly mentions the resurrection. The first
brother in the first reading said to his torturers, “You accursed fiend, you
are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us
up to live again forever." The fourth brother said to those who made him
suffer, “It is my choice to die
at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for
you, there will be no resurrection to life.”
The second reading does not mention explicitly the resurrection
from the dead but it ends with the words "endurance of Christ" which
is the necessary condition to be counted worthy to partake of the resurrection
of the dead unto everlasting life..
The Gospel reading is very explicit about the resurrection. The
Sadducees asked Jesus about a case that involves the resurrection of the dead,
a woman who had 7 husbands, all brothers, on earth. Their question was who
among the 7 husbands will have the woman as his wife, since all 7 had her as
wife before the resurrection.
The reply of Jesus to this question tells us something about
life in the after-life. He said, “The children of this age marry and remarry;
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."
Jesus' reply plainly tells us that after our resurrection, in
the life after this life, we will no longer be given in marriage nor will we
continue our married state for those of us who on earth were married. Rather we
will be like angels who do not produce their offspring by marriage.
But we are going to witness a marriage, a wedding that will be
the last wedding in the whole universe. And this is the marriage and wedding we
are looking forward to. It will be the grandest of all weddings.
According to the website of wedstats in 2012 there were an
estimated 115,000 weddings per day around the world. Presumably in 2016 this
number has increased. Jesus predicted that the number of marriages will
increase until he comes again to our planet Earth (Matthew 24:38). All of these
will stop when the Lord comes back at the resurrection of the dead. There will
be no more weddings, no more marriages. That is what Jesus told us in the
Gospel reading for today. That is, there will be no more wedding after the last
and final wedding in the whole universe.
The average wedding cost in the United States according to the
website costofwedding is 26,645 dollars which translates to 1,278,960
Philippine pesos at the current rate of 48 pesos to one dollar. It is very
expensive.
But this coming final wedding is the most expensive of all
because it will involve the whole of creation.
We read about this final wedding in the Book of Revelation. In
its 19th chapter we read, "Let us rejoice and be glad, and give him (that
is, God) glory! For this is the wedding day of the Lamb; his bride has prepared
herself for the wedding. . . . Happy are they who have been invited to the
wedding feast of the Lamb." (7,9).
While there are controversies who the bride of the Lamb is, some
say this bride is the Church, others say it is Israel or the Jewish nation,
still others say the bride is the 144,000 thousand men who were never defiled
by immorality with women (Revelation 14:4), still others say the bride is their
particular church or denomination, there is no controversy about the identity
of the Lamb or bridegroom, This is Jesus himself.
The last wedding will be between Jesus and his bride. Jesus is
the last man to be wed. As David Pawson remarked in his teachings about the
Bible, God the Father created the world to look for a worthy bride for his Son.
This final wedding is the last act of creation, just immediately before the
creation of a new heaven and a new earth.
We look forward to this final wedding. If we, the Church, is the
bride of Christ we will be most happy indeed to be his bride. If this bride is
the renewed nation of Israel we will still be part of the wedding because we
are the body of Christ, the bridegroom. Either way we will participate in the
wedding, the most wonderful in the whole universe in all of its history.
As the liturgical year is about to draw to a close it is just
fitting that the Church reminds us of the last things of our world. She reminds
us of the absence of weddings in the next life after our resurrection but she
also reminds us of the final wedding we will ever see, the wedding of the most
handsome man creation has ever produced, Jesus, and the most beautiful woman
the world has ever seen, his bride.
Let us bow our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus, you are the bridegroom
of the final wedding. You are preparing everything for this final event. You
also told us many times to prepare for this wedding. You have washed us in your
blood so that we can be spotlessly clean for this wedding. Thank you for
inviting us to this wedding. We join the mighty crowd in Revelation, “Alleluia!
The Lord is king, our God, the Almighty! Let us rejoice and be glad and give
him glory! For this is the wedding day of the Lamb; his bride has prepared
herself for the wedding. She has been given a dress to wear made of finest
linen, brilliant white.” Amen.
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Note for the readers:
The Mass readings are from the New American Bible Revised
Edition (NABRE). This is where our Lectionary gets the readings.
NAB stands for New American Bible (before it was revised). This
is the translation I use. Unless otherwise stated the text I use is from this
translation.
AV stands for Authorized Version of the Bible. It is more
commonly referred to as the King James Bible. It is the version most used in
English literature, therefore it is the one known more by the English speaking
world.
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