Homily Points
32nd Sunday C
General.
We shall pray God today to deliver us from all evil (as we do in the Our Father) so that we will be free in body and soul to serve Him without any hindrance. The Liturgy gives us the form and the words for the celebration of the Eucharist and reminds us that the Mass is an established ritual for public worship which derives its significance both from its being celebrated in praise of God communally, as one Church, which is the community of saints we mention in the Creed, and personally, whereby we might achieve our delivery from the individual temptations of the unsaintly world around us.Second Book of the Macabees.
The reading gives a clear picture of what the Jews, influenced as they were by various surrounding cultures not least of which being Hellenization, thought of afterlife some 200 years before Jesus spoke in no uncertain terms about it. The seven youths were adamant before the Greek authorities to keep God’s laws and defended wholeheartedly their belief in the resurrection of the just and the eternal death of the wicked.Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.
St Paul exhorts the faithful in various ways. He is aware of those who want to steal the faith and to impede the spreading of God’s Word. His answer to this is that God is faithful and has given us Christians longstanding consolation and hope in His grace as an aid to our doings related to our steadfastness in faith and to the conversion of sinners.St Luke.
The Saducees denied the resurrection of the righteous from among the dead. Jesus, as in the Sermon on the Mount and his preaching on the Beatitudes, portrayed an inverted order in afterlife, much different from the social logic and order extant in this life. In man’s struggle to enter this life, we realize that God is Lord of life not of death (contrary to present-day culture). He is God of the living and of the present, knowing each one of us by name, meaning that the here-and-now and the individual human being enjoy living status within Him.