EVANGELIO DEL DÍA

viernes, 19 de noviembre de 2010

"He is not God of the dead, but of the living"

DAILI GOSPEL: 20/11/2010
«Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.» John 6,68


Saturday of the Thirty-third week in Ordinary Time

Book of Revelation 11:4-12.
These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
If anyone wants to harm them, fire comes out of their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone wanting to harm them is sure to be slain.
They have the power to close up the sky so that no rain can fall during the time of their prophesying. They also have power to turn water into blood and to afflict the earth with any plague as often as they wish.
When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the abyss will wage war against them and conquer them and kill them.
Their corpses will lie in the main street of the great city, which has the symbolic names "Sodom" and "Egypt," where indeed their Lord was crucified.
Those from every people, tribe, tongue, and nation will gaze on their corpses for three and a half days, and they will not allow their corpses to be buried.
The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and be glad and exchange gifts because these two prophets tormented the inhabitants of the earth.
But after the three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them. When they stood on their feet, great fear fell on those who saw them.
Then they heard a loud voice from heaven say to them, "Come up here." So they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies looked on.

Psalms 144:1.2.9-10.
Of David. Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war;
My safe guard and my fortress, my stronghold, my deliverer, My shield, in whom I trust, who subdues peoples under me.
O God, a new song I will sing to you; on a ten-stringed lyre I will play for you.
You give victory to kings; you delivered David your servant. From the menacing sword

Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 20:27-40.
Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question to him,
saying, "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, 'If someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.'
Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless.
Then the second
and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless.
Finally the woman also died.
Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her."
Jesus said to them, "The children of this age marry and remarry;
but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.
That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called 'Lord' the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."
Some of the scribes said in reply, "Teacher, you have answered well."
And they no longer dared to ask him anything. 
Lc 20,27-40
Commentary of the day 
Vatican Council II
Constitution on the Church in the modern world « Gaudium et spes », § 18 (©Libreria Vaticana editrice)
"He is not God of the dead, but of the living"
It is in the face of death that the riddle a human existence grows most acute. Not only is man tormented by pain and by the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction. He rightly follows the intuition of his heart when he abhors and repudiates the utter ruin and total disappearance of his own person. He rebels against death because he bears in himself an eternal seed which cannot be reduced to sheer matter. All the endeavors of technology, though useful in the extreme, cannot calm his anxiety; for prolongation of biological life is unable to satisfy that desire for higher life which is inescapably lodged in his breast.

Although the mystery of death utterly beggars the imagination, the Church has been taught by divine revelation and firmly teaches that man has been created by God for a blissful purpose beyond the reach of earthly misery. In addition, that bodily death from which man would have been immune had he not sinned will be vanquished, according to the Christian faith, when man who was ruined by his own doing is restored to wholeness by an almighty and merciful Saviour. For God has called man and still calls him so that with his entire being he might be joined to Him in an endless sharing of a divine life beyond all corruption. Christ won this victory when He rose to life, for by His death He freed man from death. Hence to every thoughtful man a solidly established faith provides the answer to his anxiety about what the future holds for him. At the same time faith gives him the power to be united in Christ with his loved ones who have already been snatched away by death; faith arouses the hope that they have found true life with God.


Saturday, 20 November 2010

St. Edmund the Martyr (841-870)



Saint Edmund the MartyrKing and Martyr
(841-870)
        St. Edmund was elected king of the East Angles in 855 at the age of fourteen and began ruling Suffolk, England, the following year.
        In 869 or 870, the Danes invaded Edmund's realm, and he was captured at Hone, in Suffolk. After extreme torture, Edmund was beheaded and died calling upon Jesus.
        According to Abbo of Fleury's vita "His severed head was thrown into the wood. Day and night as Edmund's followers went seeking, calling out "Where are you, friend?" the head answered, "Here, here, here," until at last, "a great wonder", they found Edmund's head in the possession of a grey wolf, clasped between its paws. "They were astonished at the wolf's guardianship".The wolf, sent by God to protect the head from the animals of the forest, was starving but did not eat the head for all the days it was lost. After recovering the head the villagers marched back to the kingdom, praising God and the wolf that served him. The wolf walked beside them as if tame all the way to the town, after which it turned around and vanished into the forest."
        His shrine brought about the town of Bury St. Edmund's.

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