Before the recitation of the Marian prayer, Pope Francis focuses his attention on Sunday’s Gospel reading in which Jesus is provoked by a question by the Sadducees and in turn offers a wonderful teaching on the resurrection of the dead.
The Pope remarked that the Lord does not fall into the trap set by the Sadducees who ask him when a woman dies who has been married to 7 brothers, one after the another, whose wife will she be?
Jesus’ teaches on the resurrection
Pope Francis described how Jesus replies by saying, “the risen in the beyond take neither wife nor husband, for they can no longer die, because they are equal to the angels and, since they are children of the resurrection, they are children of God”.
With this answer, noted the Pope “Jesus first of all invites his interlocutors – and we too – to think that this earthly dimension in which we live now is not the only one, but there is another, no longer subject to death, in which it will be fully manifested that we are children of God.” This response commented Pope Francis gives “great consolation and hope to listen to this simple and clear word of Jesus about life beyond death; we need it so much especially in our time, so rich in knowledge about the universe but so poor in wisdom about eternal life.”
This clear certainty of Jesus about the Resurrection, said the Pontiff, “is based entirely on the fidelity of God, who is the God of life.”
Life belongs to God
Jesus answers that life belongs to God, underlined the Pope, “who loves us and cares so much about us, to the point of tying his name to ours: he is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
“God is not of the dead, but of the living; for all live for him”, said Pope Francis. He added, that “there is no life where one has the pretension to belong only to oneself and to live as islands: in these attitudes death prevails.”
