Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 502

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. 


A religious friend of mine spent some of her time in the Philippines preparing young women to enter the convent. She recalled that some of the teenage girls were surprised to find toilets in the convent. Though they had not thought deeply about it, they had somehow expected otherwise. The sisters should be "like angels." 
The Church's tradition of celibacy is based on teachings of Jesus and Saint Paul. As a present sign of the coming Kingdom, when "those who are deemed worthy...  will neither marry nor be given in marriage," priests, nuns, monks, brothers and sisters take vows or promises of celibacy. They do not marry. 
(For that matter, they don't even engage in extra-marital sex. That too, is a sign of the promised kingdom; and, for many in this age, astonishing.) 

Jesus makes a second statement about those "deemed worthy," they can no longer die. Marriage is associate with death. It will not be seen in that Kingdom. 

In my experience as a "cradle Franciscan" -- I entered the seminary when I was thirteen -- life-long celibates have a very different experience of death. Almost all the friars who taught me in the seminary have died. Soon after I entered the Mount I attended the funeral of a friar and witnessed his burial in our provincial cemetery. There were perhaps twenty graves at the time. Fifty years later, there are many graves out there, and yet our life continues. As it has since 1209 when Pope Innocent III formally recognized the Seraphic Order.  
I have not known many friars to grieve excessively when one or the other member passes. We love and care for one another but our individual lives and identities are not so deeply twined. 

Marriage ends when one or both partners die. So said Jesus. Perhaps he was speaking only of the reproductive nature of marriage, its specifically sexual dimension. 
Surely the friendships continue into Eternity. I remember how my mother missed my dad, and looked forward to their reunion. She waited over twenty years for that day. Their bodies sleep peacefully together in Saint Andrew's Cemetery. I have no doubt they enjoy one another's company as angels, and continue to pray for their family. 
I have appointed them as a welcoming committee to the Veterans I send in their direction. I often ask the dying Veteran to carry my love to them. 

...and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. During this penultimate month of the year, before the cycle begins again with the First Sunday of Advent, we think long thoughts about death. We pray to be found worthy of his kingdom; we dare not claim it for ourselves. We simply trust in the Good God who has promised such rewards to those who keep faith. We look forward to that Reunion of the Saints, and to meeting again the rascals we have known.