Dear Friend of Carmel Mission,
In today’s Gospel Jesus tangles with the Sadducees, another group like the Pharisees who see Jesus as a threat to their comfortable status quo and hope to entrap him with a ridiculous hypothetical question. Jesus easily defangs them with a moment central to the Jewish faith; the event of the burning bush (Exod 3). Here, Jesus says, God names himself as the “I AM,” the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a God in a continuing and personal relationship with the Hebrew ancestors that transcends death. Jesus also offers a glimpse into what Heaven is like, or perhaps more accurately, what it is not like, that is, our life on earth.
Last week we celebrated the Feast of All Souls, and had a special Mass to remember our loved ones who have gone home to God. I can think back to a time when I believed that Heaven would be a place where all my questions would be answered. With time though, I have come to consider that it may be a place where both question and answer are irrelevant.