Reflections on Revelation 11:4-12 / Luke 20:27-40
by Frank D.B. Savadera, SJ
My
parents died early. My father died at 55
years old – a time when I was doing my
factory trials while in the novitiate.
My mother died at 63 years old – a time when I was doing my studies in
philosophy. These so-called tragic
events in my life came during my initial formation as a Jesuit – which to my
mind, I believe had shaped my perspective about many things. For one,
each day I had been more convinced that life indeed is fleeting. This is not a cliché’ … it’s a reality that
we live. I can despair thinking and
asking how an old priest is discovered late and dead inside his room. I stop and say: Eh ganun eh … life is fleeting. It may be someone’s time now. It may be someone else’s time tomorrow.
Thus,
though I can be a bit hyperactive at times – being too concerned about what new
thing can be done … filling my schedule with things to be accomplished … I’ve
also have a sense of working with what I have.
If this is what God wished, then he will provide for it. If this is what God provided for me at this
time: I work with what I have.
Likewise
… and this had become a refrain, I realize as I invite prospects to vocprom
activities. People make a lot of
excuses, of course for not making it to an event … and I oftentimes end up
telling them: As the Spirit wills. Yes … if God is calling someone, then he
creates every opportunity for that vocation to grow. I am an instrument to the creation of such
opportunities. But the call is also
God’s gift. If God wishes you to be a
Jesuit … let it be … as the Spirit wills.
How
do we make sense of such an obscure mystery as the resurrection … a
reality that we profess? This is what
is being asked by the Saduccees in our Gospel today isn’t it?
Simply
put, isn’t the resurrection a reality that forces us to think about a state
that is beyond what we can sense … what we can see … and touch and feel …
beyond what we can control? There is
something beyond us. There is a reality
outside our control. This makes the
question of the Saducees truly amusing … if not shameful: Whose wife will she be? Is that something which our human minds can
answer? Jesus points to the fact that
our lives after death, are totally different from how we view our lives in this
world. What’s the difficulty settling
with that?
To
my mind, the difficulty comes with our failings to accept ourselves, for who we
truly are … our limits and our weaknesses.
Much like the Saducees, we wish to have a ready answer to explain
everything around us. Even that is a
gift. But do we have the capacity to
explain all and everything?
If
I will have a prayer for the Saducees in the Gospel, I pray that they may have the grace of SHAME
and EMBARASSMENT for desiring to know
more and be more than what they actually are.
Shame
brings us to the reality of our limited self.
Shame makes God’s offer of forgiveness more acceptable. It is God’s forgiveness that allows us to
eventually embrace who and what we are … our wounds and our scars. Isn’t this our resurrection?
Topics
such as resilience, optimal functioning, and the power of a well-lived life
seem uniquely suited to a discipline whose foundational beliefs include the
resurrection.
I
believe the general issues of hope, death as a precursor to life, freedom,
making God known, transformation, and purpose influence my intentionality as a
practitioner of soul care. How is your
work with people affected by the resurrection?
The
Gospel tells us that the dead will indeed rise and that our God is the God of
the living and not the dead. We will all
rise … because this is how the Spirit wills things.
