Marriage & Unmarriage in Heaven

I finally did it! I’ve envisioned this for a long, long time, but waited through a few years of formation, building a house, moving, unpacking, settling in, and several more months. Finally, this week, it seemed just about right. After talking with my spiritual director about it, I’ve finally tested publishing a podcast/audio version of my “weekly” reflection (below.) Let’s see if I can keep this up. If you’re interested, be sure to subscribe to the email updates (in the right-hand column) and/or the podcast feed. In future weeks I’ll work on the audio quality, intro music, and more. But to get started, here we go!

Just last week, my wife Suzanne made a joke around our kitchen island with some of our boys… she said, “Since your dad is married to me, his job is to help make sure I go to Heaven… so that I can remind him of all the mistakes he made for all eternity.”

Joking aside, this Sunday’s Gospel uses our idea of marriage as a backdrop for Jesus teaching us a bit about what to expect of the world to come.

Approached by Sadducees, some of His time who didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection, Jesus was asked about a hypothetical scenario rooted in the Jewish law of the time related to marriage. It was a question about a woman who had a succession of lawful marriages after one then another of her husbands had died, and to which of the men she would be married in heaven.

Jesus seizes the opportunity not to focus on their riddle about marriage, but rather to teach about the means to their question – what heaven is like, or even moreso, what heaven is not like.

Jesus takes the opportunity to point out indirectly that marriage in our current existence is a construct at the service of the church and society, but is not replicated in the life hereafter. He teaches emphatically about a life to come after our current life, pointing out that even Moses recognized God of the living, not of the dead. Jesus said, “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.”

In one fell swoop, Jesus teaches that our earthly states of single or married life don’t follow us into heaven, but serve to help us get there.

Maybe that’s good news to those of us living a single life – we get to go into heaven with that unattached life intact, but we don’t carry with us any of the earthly loneliness that can sometimes come with living a vocation to single life. Our entire focus for eternity is gazing upon and worshipping the awesome reality of the love and power of God.

Maybe that’s good news too, to those of us living a married life – we go to heaven as the individuals that God created us to be. Maybe it’s sad that we won’t be “married” to our spouse for eternity. Or, for some of us, especially with those of us who have a lot of mistakes for our spouse to remind us of for eternity, it might be reassuring to know that maybe we can still love our spouse and loved ones in a new way, but be more focused on our love and worship of God than on dwelling on the wins and losses of our life.

A challenge for us to consider in this new week, as we continue to journey through this month in which we especially reflect upon the last things and those who have gone before us, is how we can continue to support one another in our Christian journeys in order to be among “those who are deemed worthy to attain the coming age.”

Married or single, in this community of faith, how do you support those around you? As Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in the second reading, “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.” How can you support your spouse, your friend, your neighbor in this journey toward living in the love of God and sharing in the endurance of Christ more fully?

The more we care for our bodies, our relationships, these things in the world that God has given to us, but without becoming attached to them, the more we can be formed in the love of God and formed for the world that is promised to us for eternity. As the brother in the first reading from the second book of Maccabees said today, “It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again… with the hope God gives of being raised up by him”

May God give us the grace to live with ever-decreasing attachment to the things of the earth, and ever-greater support of one another in running the Christian race, until that day when, God-willing, we can join together in the praise and worship of God in the world to come, joined with all those who have gone before us in the army of Saints.