Remembrance Day - Sunday 10 November 2019
32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Morning Masses 8.30 & 10.15am Evening 6pm
Blessing of Graves at Sutton Road at 3pm
St Peter's Catholic Church SS9 4BX
Eastwood Parish Leigh on Sea
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Next Ordinariate Use Mass
Low Mass Wednesday 20 November 7.30pm
Next Sunday Sung Mass in the Ordinariate Use -
Second Sunday of Advent 8 December
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To Rise Again:
Scott Hahn Reflects on the Thirty-Second Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Readings:
2 Maccabees 7:1–2, 9–14
Psalm 17:1, 5–6, 8, 15
2 Thessalonians 2:16–3:5
Luke 20:27–38
With their riddle about seven brothers and a childless widow, the
Sadducees in today’s Gospel mock the faith for which seven brothers and
their mother die in the First Reading.
The Maccabean martyrs chose death—tortured limb by limb, burned
alive—rather than betray God’s Law. Their story is given to us in these
last weeks of the Church year to strengthen us for endurance—that our
feet might not falter but remain steadfast on His paths.
The Maccabeans died hoping that the “King of the World” would raise them to live again forever (see 2 Maccabees 14:46).
The Sadducees don’t believe in the resurrection because they can’t
find it literally taught in the Scriptures. To ridicule this belief they
fix on a law that requires a woman to marry her husband’s brother if he
should die without leaving an heir (see Genesis 38:8; Deuteronomy 25:5).
But God’s Law wasn’t given to ensure the raising up of descendants to
earthly fathers. The Law was given, as Jesus explains, to make us
worthy to be “children of God”—sons and daughters born of His
Resurrection.
“God our Father,” today’s Epistle tells us, has given us “everlasting
encouragement” in the Resurrection of Christ. Through His grace, we can
now direct our hearts to the love of God.
As the Maccabeans suffered for the Old Law, we will have to suffer
for our faith in the New Covenant. Yet He will guard us in the shadow of
His wing, keep us as the apple of His eye, as we sing in today’s Psalm.
The Maccabeans’ persecutors marveled at their courage. We too can
glorify the Lord in our sufferings and in the daily sacrifices we make.
And we have even greater cause than they for hope. One who has risen
from the dead has given us His word—that He is the God of the living,
that when we awake from the sleep of death we will behold His face, and
will be be content in His presence (see Psalm 76:6; Daniel 12:2).
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