Daily Devotional for June 21

 

June 21                                                          Luke 20:27-40

           Children of the Resurrection

There are so many laws, regulations, rules, and customs
governing our lives that it sometimes becomes difficult to main-
tain any clarity about what is truly important. We can easily
get caught up in these rules, as though they were the only stan-
dards by which to guide our lives and actions now and in the
hereafter. Like the Sadducees, we tend to think that life as we
now know it is all there is. Like the Sadducees, we tend to
impose upon our notions of the afterlife the limits of our
understanding, limits which are based entirely on our exper-
iences in this life.

One such limit in our understanding has to do with death. It
is true, of course, that our life as we now know it will come
to an end. But it is equally true that in God we never die. That
is why Jesus teaches us in today's passage that those who are
in God "cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels
and are children of God, being children of the resurrection."

In Western society we tend to fear death, a fear that may have
its roots in the limits of our human understanding. Since we
have never actually seen and experienced the afterlife, we
naturally fear that death is the end of life.

Jesus assures us that death is but a doorway to a new kind of
life, one that we cannot experience in our present condition.
Today's Gospel is therefore an invitation to open our hearts
and minds to the possibility of a new age in which we and
the ones we love "cannot die any more," an age in which
neither AIDS, nor heart and lung disease, nor murder, nor star-
vation can touch us, in which the only law is the law of love.
Therefore we can proclaim with Paul: "O death, where is your
victory? O death, where is your sting?" (I Corinthians 15:55)

       Holy One, take away my desire to ask questions
   about issues that are not really very important. Help
  me to recognize the important questions, give me the
       courage to ask them, and give me the grace to
         listen to your answers so that I may receive
                 the full measure of your teaching.

​

 

From The Road to Emmaus - An inclusive devotional Edited by Joseph W. Houle

Emmaus House of Prayer - Washington D.C.198