Yes, there is life beyond death – and it belongs to God. That was at the core of the Holy Father’s message today in St Peter’s Square during his commentary before he prayed the noonday Angelus with thousands of the faithful from around the world.
“Today’s evangelical page (Cf. Luke 20:27-38) gives us a wonderful teaching of Jesus on the resurrection of the dead.,” Pope Francis said. “Jesus is questioned by some Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection and so provoke Him with an insidious question: in the resurrection, whose wife will a woman be who had seven successive husbands, all brothers between them, who died one after the other?”
Of course, Jesus avoids this trap by providing a look at life after resurrection: “neither marry or are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to the angels and are sons of God” (vv. 35-36).”
“With this answer, Jesus invites his interlocutors first of all — and also us — to think that this earthly dimension, in which we now live, isn’t the only dimension, but there is another, no longer subject to death, in which it will be fully manifested that we are children of God,” Francis continued. “It gives great consolation and hope to hear this simple and clear word of Jesus on life beyond death; we have so much need of it, especially in our time, so rich in knowledge of the universe but so poor in wisdom on eternal life.”
The Holy Father explained that the real question isn’t who would be the wife’s husband in the afterlife, but to whom would her life belong. In other words, what will life be after death?
“This limpid certainty of Jesus on the resurrection is based entirely on the fidelity of God, who is the God of life,’ Francis said. “Jesus answers that life belongs to God, who loves us and is so concerned about us, to the point of linking His Name to ours.”
The Holy Father’s Full Commentary
