A Reflection on
Luke 20:27-40
The Sadducees walk up to Jesus
thinking they're so clever. They've got this whole scenario worked out, seven
brothers, one woman, whose wife is she in the resurrection? They're smirking
because they don't even believe in resurrection. It's a trap question, a
mockery. But watch what Jesus does. He doesn't get defensive. He doesn't dodge.
He goes straight to the heart of their problem: "You are wrong, because
you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God." That one sentence
should make all of us pause. How often do we box God in? How often do we think
heaven works like earth, only shinier? Jesus is telling them, and us, that
God's power is so far beyond our categories that we can't even ask the right
questions yet. The resurrection isn't about who's married to whom. It's about
becoming something we've never been before: deathless, imperishable, fully
alive as children of God.
Then Jesus hits them with Moses and the burning bush. "I am the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Present tense. Right
now. Those patriarchs aren't sleeping in some holding pattern waiting for the
end times. They are alive to God this very second. Jesus is ripping apart the
illusion that death is the end, that the grave gets the last word. He's saying
God doesn't attach Himself to dead things, He's the God of the living. Everyone
who belongs to Him is alive in Him, even if their body is in the ground. That's
not metaphor. That's reality. The veil between this world and the next is
thinner than we think, and on the other side, there's not emptiness, there's
life, blazing and real and eternal.
Now picture Our Lady with her Rosary in hand. She knows this truth in her bones
because she's living it. When she meditates on the Glorious Mysteries, she's
not daydreaming about nice ideas, she's remembering what she witnessed and what
she's experienced. She saw Jesus walk out of that tomb. She felt the wind of
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. She was assumed into heaven, body and soul,
because God doesn't do things halfway. Mary is proof that what Jesus promised
in Luke 20 isn't distant or abstract. It's already begun. When we pray those
decades with her, we're learning to see past the surface of things. We're
training our hearts to believe what looks impossible: that death is temporary,
that our bodies will rise, that heaven is our true home and we're being
prepared for it right now.
Look, today’s scripture isn't just theology to study, it's oxygen for your
soul. If you really believe what Jesus says here, everything changes. Your
grief doesn't disappear, but it shifts because you know the people you've lost
aren't lost at all. Your fear of death loses its grip because you're a child of
the resurrection and death can't hold you. Your struggles in this life, the
pain, the confusion, the waiting, they're birth pangs, not the end of the
story. Jesus looked the Sadducees in the eye and told them they had no idea
what God could do. Don't make the same mistake. God is the God of the living.
You are alive to Him right now, and one day, you'll be more alive than you ever
thought possible. That's the gospel. That's the promise. That's what Mary is
pointing us toward with every bead of the Rosary - Come and see. Come and live.
So, here's my challenge to you: pray
the Rosary every day. Not out of obligation, but because Mary is waiting to
walk with you through these mysteries, to show you what's real, to prepare your
heart for the resurrection life that's already breaking into this world. Give
her twenty minutes of your day and watch what happens. Consecrate yourself to
her, let her form you, let her lead you closer to her Son. She's not just a
saint we honor from a distance, she's our Mother, alive and active, interceding
for us right now in the presence of the God of the living. When you put those
beads in your hands, you're joining your prayer to hers, and there's no more
powerful place to be. Let Mary teach you how to live like a child of the
resurrection. Let her show you the way home.
©2025 James Dacey, Jr., OFS
