November 22, 2025
Memorial of Saint Cecilia,
Virgin and Martyr
Lectionary: 502
Reading
1
As King Antiochus
was traversing the inland provinces,
he heard that in Persia there was a city called Elymais,
famous for its wealth in silver and gold,
and that its temple was very rich,
containing gold helmets, breastplates, and weapons
left there by Alexander, son of Philip,
king of Macedon, the first king of the Greeks.
He went therefore and tried to capture and pillage the city.
But he could not do so,
because his plan became known to the people of the city
who rose up in battle against him.
So he retreated and in great dismay withdrew from there
to return to Babylon.
While he was in Persia, a messenger brought him news
that the armies sent into the land of Judah had been put to flight;
that Lysias had gone at first with a strong army
and been driven back by the children of Israel;
that they had grown strong
by reason of the arms, men, and abundant possessions
taken from the armies they had destroyed;
that they had pulled down the Abomination
which he had built upon the altar in Jerusalem;
and that they had surrounded with high walls
both the sanctuary, as it had been before,
and his city of Beth-zur.
When the king heard this news,
he was struck with fear and very much shaken.
Sick with grief because his designs had failed, he took to his bed.
There he remained many days, overwhelmed with sorrow,
for he knew he was going to die.
So he called in all his Friends and said to them:
"Sleep has departed from my eyes,
for my heart is sinking with anxiety.
I said to myself: 'Into what tribulation have I come,
and in what floods of sorrow am I now!
Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.'
But I now recall the evils I did in Jerusalem,
when I carried away all the vessels of gold and silver
that were in it, and for no cause
gave orders that the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed.
I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me;
and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land."
Responsorial
Psalm
Psalm 9:2-3, 4 and 6, 16 and 19
R. (see 16a) I
will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Most High.
R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.
Because my enemies are turned back,
overthrown and destroyed before you.
You rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;
their name you blotted out forever and ever.
R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.
The nations are sunk in the pit they have made;
in the snare they set, their foot is caught.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
nor shall the hope of the afflicted forever perish.
R. I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia,
alleluia.
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death
and brought life to light through the Gospel.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Some Sadducees, those
who deny that there is a resurrection,
came forward and put this question to Jesus, 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.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112225.cfm
Commentary on 1
Maccabees 6:1-13
We read today of the end of the reign of King Antiochus IV
Epiphanes, who caused such sufferings to the Jews, as we have seen. Disasters
now overtake him, resulting in his sickness and death. For the author of First
Maccabees the reason is clear—his desecration of God’s holy city of Jerusalem.
In terms of strict chronology, this episode of the king’s
death should really be recorded before the Dedication of the Temple which we
saw in yesterday’s reading. The reading begins by telling us that Antiochus was
making his way through the Upper Provinces of his empire, that is, inland to
the east. Reports had reached him of a city called Elymais which was extremely
wealthy with silver and gold. There was a temple there full of golden armour
which had been left there by Alexander the Great, who was the son of Philip of
Macedon, the first king of all the Greeks. This was the temple of
Nanaea-Artemis.
In fact, there is no town of this name known. ‘Elymais’ is
the Greek form of Elam, which refers to the country around Susa, the old
capital of Persia, close to where the River Tigris runs into the Persian Gulf.
The term more strictly refers to the mountainous region north of Susa.
Antiochus attacked the city, but was unable to take it
because, as we are told, the inhabitants had forewarning of the attack. In Second
Maccabees we read:
When the leader reached Persia with a force that seemed
irresistible, they were cut to pieces in the temple of Nanea [a
Persian counterpart of the Greeks’ Artemis] by a deception employed by
the priests of the goddess Nanea.
(2 Macc 1:13)
First Maccabees does not mention this and may not know of
it. The author says that the king was routed in battle and had to retreat to
Babylon which lay some distance to the northwest on the River Euphrates.
On top of this, more bad news reached the king. His armies
which had invaded Judaea had been routed, and one of his top generals, Lysias,
in particular, who had advanced with massive strength, had been forced to flee
before the Jews. The Jews, in turn, were now more powerful than ever thanks to the
large amounts of weapons they had captured in their victories.
They had also pulled down the “abomination”—the altar to
Zeus which Antiochus had erected in the Jerusalem Temple—and rebuilt the old
walls which surrounded the sanctuary and fortified Beth-Zur, one of the king’s
cities.
All of this was too much for Antiochus, who was shocked and
profoundly shaken by the turn of events. These defeats—and perhaps the
overthrow of the statue of all the all-powerful gods, Zeus and Baal (in whom he
believed), filled him with grief and undermined his health. He took to his bed,
fell sick with grief because things had turned out so badly for him. After
spending some days confined to his bed, with recurrent attacks of melancholy
and depression, he realised that his end was near. It was time for him to make
his peace with his gods.
On his deathbed, he summons all his “Friends”, that is, his
close associates and ministers, and makes a deathbed speech. He cannot sleep
and he is overcome with anxiety about his fate. He wonders how he could have
come to such a state of distress, considering how generous and well-loved he
was in his heyday. He remembers only the favours he showered on those who were
close to him, but seems to have been completely unaware of the depth of suffering
that he had caused in the peoples he had conquered and over-run. How many other
authoritarian tyrants have felt the same—that all they did was for the good of
their people? Dictators come to believe their own propaganda.
However, Antiochus does remember now how wrongly he acted in
Jerusalem, when he plundered the Temple of all its sacred vessels and ordered
the extermination of the people of Judah “without good reason”. He is now
convinced that this is the reason why so many misfortunes have overtaken him
and why he is dying miserable, “perishing of bitter disappointment in a strange
land”. It is the just punishment for all he did against God’s people. There is
an element of true repentance in his words and for this he lays himself open to
God’s mercy.
Technically speaking, he was not dying in a “strange land”
because Persia still was part of his Seleucid Empire. This book says the king’s
death was punishment for the pillaging of the Temple in Jerusalem, but Second
Maccabees says it was for plundering the temple of Artemis. Second Maccabees
also says, as we saw from the quotation above, that the king died in this
temple, having walked into the trap set for him and his ‘Friends’ by the
priests of the temple.
Actually, Antiochus must have died before all of this, but
the author has to adapt his story to fit the time frame he has chosen. As we
saw in speaking of the Dedication feast yesterday, it is likely that it was
because the king was already dead that Judas Maccabeus was able to seize the
Temple in Jerusalem. As far as we are concerned, it is not an important point
because it does not alter the basic meaning of the story and what it might say
to us.
How do we think our lives will be evaluated by those who
have known us in life? Do we believe ourselves to be more kindly and
compassionate than we actually are? What actions of ours in the past do we now
see were very wrong and unjust? What amends can we make, for it is never too
late to turn ourselves round. We cannot undo what has been done, but we can act
to make a radical change in our lives and relationships from today on.
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Commentary on Luke
20:27-40
Today we move on to the middle of chapter 20 of Luke’s
Gospel. In previous passages which are not included in these readings, Jesus
had rebutted a challenge to his authority and left his critics literally
speechless (Luke 20:1-8). This was followed by his speaking a parable about
tenant farmers (Luke 20:9-19). He was clearly referring to his questioners and
identifying them with the wicked tenants who abused all the emissaries (the
prophets) sent by the owner of the vineyard—an episode which culminated in the
killing of his son. The identity of the tenants and of the Son is clear. This
is followed by Jesus’ being confronted with a seemingly innocuous question
about paying taxes to Caesar which again resulted in the silence of his critics
(Luke 20:20-26).
Today another group, the Sadducees, thought they might do
better. The Sadducees, among whom were numbered some of the most powerful
Jewish leaders, including high priests, restricted their beliefs to the
Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, reputedly written by Moses and
containing the essence of the Jewish Law.
For that reason, unlike the Pharisees, they did not accept
some beliefs which occur only in later books of the Old Testament. Among these,
for instance, were the existence of angels and the resurrection of the dead.
The Sadducees thought then they could stump Jesus with an
unanswerable conundrum. They first quote a prescription from the Law of Moses
by which a man was expected to marry the widow of his eldest brother, if there
had been no children by the marriage. They then propose an imagined situation
of seven brothers. The first brother married, but was childless when he died,
so in accordance with the requirements of the Law the second married the widow,
then the third and so on. Eventually, all seven brothers married the woman, but
there were still no children.
The unanswerable question they proposed was that, if there
really was a resurrection after death, which of the seven men would be the
woman’s husband in the next life? For them, there was no problem; they did not
believe in the resurrection. Death was the end of everything. For one who
believed in the resurrection, it was an embarrassing difficulty—or so they
thought.
Jesus quickly brushes the problem aside. To begin with, in
the next life there are no marriage relationships:
Those who belong to this age [i.e. those who
belong to this world] marry and are given in marriage, but those who
are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the
dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.
In the new life, all live face to face with God in a life
that never ends. All are equally children of God—brothers and sisters to each
other—taking their life and existence from him. That is now the focus of their
relationship and it is through that relationship that they are bound together.
Jesus then goes on to challenge the Sadducees’ unbelief
about life after death. He shrewdly quotes from a part of the Bible which they
recognise as true. He reminds them of the scene where the voice from the
burning bush identifies itself to Moses:
I AM the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Ex 3:6)
God, says Jesus, is the God of the living and not of the
dead (i.e. of those who no longer exist). If Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are
alive, then the Sadducees’ argument fails. Perhaps we would not be convinced by
such an argument, but it clearly worked in this case.
Some scribes who were listening in were delighted at the
refutation of the Sadducees. Most of them were Pharisees and believed in the
resurrection. At the same time, after these replies of Jesus to both the
Pharisees and the Sadducees:
…they no longer dared to ask him another question.
We, of course, believe in the resurrection not so much
because of Jesus’ arguments here, but because of his own resurrection and his
promise to share his life with us forever.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/o1337g/
Saturday,
November 22, 2025
Ordinary Time
Opening prayer
Father of all that is good, keep
us faithful in serving you, for to serve you is our lasting joy.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who
lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Gospel reading - Luke 20:27-40
Some Sadducees who argue that there
is no resurrection, approached Jesus and put this question to him, “Master,
Moses wrote for us, if a man's married brother dies childless, the man must
marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well then, there were
seven brothers. The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second
and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died
leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died. Now, at the resurrection,
whose wife will she be, since she had been married to all seven?”
Jesus replied, “The
children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy
of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not
marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and
being children of the resurrection they are children of God. And Moses showed
that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the
Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now He is God,
not of the dead, but of the living; for to Him everyone is alive.”
Some scribes
then spoke up. They said, “Well put, Master.” They did not dare to ask Him any
more questions.
Reflection
•
The Gospel today gives us the discussion of the
Sadducees with Jesus on faith in the resurrection.
•
Luke 20, 27: The ideology of the Sadducees. The
Gospel today begins with the following affirmation: “The Sadducees affirm that
there is no resurrection”. The Sadducees were an elite type of aristocrat. They
were conservative, insisting on a literal interpretation of the Law, and were
invested in Roman rule and order. They did not accept faith in the
resurrection. At that time, this faith was beginning to be valued by both the
Pharisees and by ordinary people. This motivated people to resist the dominion
of the Romans and of the priests, elders, and the Sadducees for whom the
Messianic Kingdom was already present in the status quo. The Saducees were
typically well off and content with the way things were at the time. They
wanted religion to remain immutable like God himself. To ridicule faith in the
resurrection, they created fictitious cases in which faith in the resurrection
seemed absurd.
•
Luke 20, 28-33: The fictitious case of the woman
who married seven times. According to the law of the time, if the husband died
without leaving any children, his brother had to marry the widow of the
deceased man. This was done in case someone died without any descendants. In
such cases, the dead man’s property would go to another family (Dt 25, 5-6).
The Sadducees invented the story of a woman who buried seven husbands, brothers
among themselves, and then she herself also died without children. And they
asked Jesus: “This woman then, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be?
Because the seven of them had her as wife”. This was invented in order to show
that faith in the resurrection creates absurd situations, and exemplifies the
literal interpretation the Saducees gave to the Law..
•
Luke 20, 34-38: The response of Jesus which
leaves no doubts. The response of Jesus displays the irritation of one who
cannot bear pretense or deceit. Jesus cannot bear hypocrisy on the part of the
elite which manipulates and ridicules faith in God to legitimize and defend its
own interests. The response contains two parts. (a) you understand nothing of
the resurrection: “The children of this world take wives and husbands, but
those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the
resurrection from the dead, do not marry, because they can no longer die, for
they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection, they
are children of God” (vv. 34-36). Jesus explains that the condition of persons
after death will be totally different from the current condition. After death,
there will be no marriages and all will be like angels in heaven. (b) The
Sadducees imagined life in Heaven the same as life on earth. You understand
nothing about God: “That the dead will rise, Moses has also showed this in
regard to the bush, when he calls the Lord: the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not God of the dead, but of the living,
because all live in him”. The disciples are attentive and learn! Those who are
on the side of the Sadducees find themselves on the opposite side of God.
•
Luke 20, 39-40: The reaction of others before
the response of Jesus. “Then some of the scribes said: “Master you have spoken
well. And they no longer dared to ask Him any more questions”. It is possible
that some of these scribes were Pharisees, because the Pharisees believed in
the resurrection (cf. Ac 23, 6). Either way, Jesus reduced his opponents to
silence.
Personal questions
•
Today, how do the groups which have power
imitate the Sadducees and prepare traps in order to prevent changes in the
world and in the Church?
•
Do you believe in the resurrection? When you say
that you believe in the resurrection, do you think about something of the past,
of the present or of the future? Have you ever had an experience of
resurrection in your life?
Concluding prayer
This I believe: I shall see the goodness of Yahweh, in the
land of the living.
Put your hope in Yahweh, be strong, let your heart be bold,
put your hope in Yahweh. (Ps 27,13-14)
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