Daily Mass Gospel Reflection

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is debating the materialists of his day: the Sadducees, those who deny the resurrection. They put forward an almost comical case of seven brothers who died leaving no descendants for the widow. They ask, "At the resurrection when they arise whose wife will she be?" Jesus brushes aside this bit of facile casuistry.

The body is a means of communication. The most intense personal communication possible is that which happens between two married people—sexual, psychological, and personal intimacy. Given the limitations and restrictions of our bodies here below, this type of intimacy is possible only with one other person.

The heavenly state involves a body too, but a transformed, transfigured, and elevated body—what Paul called a spiritual body. It is still a means of communication, but now it is so intense and spiritualized that it can mediate an intimate communion with all those who love the Lord. We are not less than bodily in heaven; we are super-bodily. We communicate more extensively and more intimately, and with everyone. Hence, in heaven, we are not given to one person in marriage, but to all. All of this becomes plain in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Tobit 3

On the same day, at Ecbatana in Media, it so happened that Raguel’s daughter Sarah also had to listen to abuse, from one of her father’s maids. For she had been married to seven husbands, but the wicked demon Asmodeus killed them off before they could have intercourse with her, as it is prescribed for wives. So the maid said to her: “You are the one who strangles your husbands! Look at you! You have already been married seven times, but you have had no joy with any one of your husbands. Why do you beat us? Is it on account of your seven husbands, Because they are dead? May we never see a son or daughter of yours!”
The girl was deeply saddened that day, and she went into an upper chamber of her house, where she planned to hang herself.
But she reconsidered, saying to herself: “No! People would level this insult against my father: ‘You had only one beloved daughter, but she hanged herself because of ill fortune!’ And thus would I cause my father in his old age to go down to the nether world laden with sorrow. It is far better for me not to hang myself, but to beg the Lord to have me die, so that I need no longer live to hear such insults.”
At that time, then, she spread out her hands, and facing the window, poured out her prayer:

“Blessed are you, O Lord, merciful God, and blessed is your holy and honorable name. Blessed are you in all your works for ever!”

+++When they rise from the dead,
they neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but they are like the angels in heaven.+++

"Tobit 3"

Tobit is clearly manifest as a fable, being about a women, Sarah, who has lost seven husbands because Asmodeus, the demon of lust, and "the worst of demons," abducts and kills every man she marries on their wedding night before the marriage can be consummated!

And about a man, Tobias, who was sleeping with his eyes open while birds dropped dung into in his eyes (sound sleeper!) and blinded him. And who later is attacked by a fish leaping out of the river to devour him! But Raphael has him capture it and later he burns the fish’s liver and heart to drive away the demon Asmodeus away to Upper Egypt [let the Coptics deal with him?], enabling Tobias and Sarah to finally consummate his marriage.

And then there is Tobit 12:9, “almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin.”

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