REFLECTION FOR TODAY
Father, you guide your people with kindness and govern us with love. By the prayers of Saint Gregory give the spirit of wisdom to those you have called to lead your Church. May the growth of Your people in holiness be the eternal joy of our shepherds.
-- Liturgy of the Hours
READINGS FOR TODAY
First Reading: 1 Maccabees 6:1-13
(The Death of Antiochus the Fourth)
1 As King Antiochus the Fourth was passing through Mesopotamia, he heard of a city in Persia, named Elymais, which was famous for its riches in silver and gold.
2 The temple was very rich, containing gold shields, armor, and weapons left there by Alexander, son of King Philip of Macedonia, who was the first to rule the Greek Empire.
3 Antiochus came and tried to take the city and loot it, but he didn't succeed, because the citizens had learned what he was planning to do,4 and they drew up their troops to resist him. In great frustration he withdrew to return to Babylonia.
5 In Persia a messenger reached him with the news that the armies he had sent into Judea had been defeated.
6 Lysias and his strong army had been forced to flee from the Jews, who were now reinforced by the additional weapons, supplies, and loot they had taken from the defeated armies.
7 The Jews had pulled down the thing they called “The Awful Horror” that Antiochus had built on the altar in Jerusalem. They had also surrounded the Temple with high walls, as it had been before, and had taken and fortified the town of Bethzur, one of the king's own towns.
8 When the king heard this report, he was so dumbfounded and terribly shaken that he went to bed in a fit of deep depression because things had not turned out as he had hoped.
9 He remained ill for a long time, as waves of despair swept over him, until he finally realized that he was going to die.
10 He called together all those to whom he had given the title “Friends of the King” and said to them, “I cannot sleep, and my heart is broken with grief and worry.
11 At first I asked myself why these great waves of trouble were sweeping over me, since I have been kind and well-liked during my reign.
12 But then I remembered the wrongs I did in Jerusalem when I took all the silver and gold objects from the Temple and tried without any good reason to destroy the inhabitants of Judea.
13 I know this is why all these terrible things have happened to me and I am about to die in deep despair here in this foreign land.”
Psalms: Psalm 9:2-4, 6, 16, 19
2 I will sing with joy because of you. I will sing praise to you, Almighty God.
3 My enemies turn back when you appear; they fall down and die.
4 You are fair and honest in your judgments, and you have judged in my favor.
6 Our enemies are finished forever; you have destroyed their cities, and they are completely forgotten.
16 The Lord has revealed himself by his righteous judgments, and the wicked are trapped by their own deeds.
19 Come, Lord! Do not let anyone defy you! Bring the heathen before you and pronounce judgment on them.
Gospel: Luke 20:27-40
(The Question about Rising from Death)
27 Then some Sadducees, who say that people will not rise from death, came to Jesus and said,
28 “Teacher, Moses wrote this law for us: ‘If a man dies and leaves a wife but no children, that man's brother must marry the widow so that they can have children who will be considered the dead man's children.’
29 Once there were seven brothers; the oldest got married and died without having children.
30 Then the second one married the woman,
31 and then the third. The same thing happened to all seven—they died without having children.
32 Last of all, the woman died.
33 Now, on the day when the dead rise to life, whose wife will she be? All seven of them had married her.”
34 Jesus answered them, “The men and women of this age marry,
35 but the men and women who are worthy to rise from death and live in the age to come will not then marry.
36 They will be like angels and cannot die. They are the children of God, because they have risen from death.
37 And Moses clearly proves that the dead are raised to life. In the passage about the burning bush he speaks of the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
38 He is the God of the living, not of the dead, for to him all are alive.”
39 Some of the teachers of the Law spoke up, “A good answer, Teacher!”
40 For they did not dare ask him any more questions.
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