I heard a stand-up comedian make a funny observation about human fears once. He pointed out that in a survey several years back, the question was asked of people what they were most afraid of. The number one answer was speaking in public. The number two answer was death. The comedian pointed out that for the average person, if you are at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. I don’t know what that says about me, I have to speak in public regularly and I speak to families about death quite often. I should be a nervous wreck according to that statistic.
I am not trying to make light of people’s fears, especially people’s fear of death. I brought up that quote because I wanted to point out that many people are afraid of death. I’m not sure whether the statistic is still the same or whether the fear of death has gotten higher or lower in comparison to other fears, but it is most definitely still a great fear for many people. For some it seems to be a fear of their own death; their own mortality. For others there is a fear for those who have gone before us. Still others seem to have a combination of both. Perhaps that is why there are so many shows and movies concerning death. There are many horror films centered on psycho-killers. Other films focus on the un-dead, with zombies and vampires and mummies coming back from the grave. I’m no psychologist, but it certainly seems to me that these scary images of death stem from people’s fear of death. A person unsure of what may happen after death, may fear that there is no peace after death. The fascination of un-dead zombies and monsters in movies and TV is really a twisting of the Christian idea of life after death.
I personally love Shakespeare. He would often include veiled references to matters of the Christian faith in his plays. In the play Twelfth Night, one of the main characters is a countess by the name of Olivia. Olivia is in mourning after the death of her brother. Her attendants are worried about her because she has been mourning a long time. A man shows up at the house who is Olivia's court jester. The jester's job was to entertain his master, but also to be the one who speaks the truth to the master. The jester was also called, the fool, because only a fool would tell the whole truth, even bad news, to their boss.
Anyway, this fool has been traveling around, but without Olivia's permission. Such a thing could get a person locked up in chains or even killed. This jester seems to be very foolish indeed. When Olivia first sees the jester, she orders her men to “Take the fool away.” Thinking quickly on his feet, the jester starts arguing that the countess is actually more foolish than he is. Olivia brushes this off as ridiculous, and tries to have him taken away again. But the jester begs her, “My lady, give me a chance to prove you are a fool”. She says, “Prove it”. The jester asks her, “My lady, why are you mourning?” She looks incredulously at the jester, “Good fool, for my brother's death!” The jester simply says, “I think his soul is in hell, my lady.” Olivia responds angrily, “I know his soul is in heaven, fool!” The jester looks at her and says, “the more fool, my lady, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven.” He then turns and tells her guards, “Take the fool away, gentlemen!”
The jester's quick wit helps pull Olivia out of the melancholy she was been feeling. His point is quite clear: he may be called a fool and do foolish things, but she is more foolish for mourning for so long when her faith told her that her brother was in heaven. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with mourning or being sad about the death of a loved one. There is a time to mourn and weep, and there will be plenty of times when that loved one will be missed. In the play, Olivia had taken the mourning to an unhealthy level. The jester was trying to pull her back to reality and to see a more positive side.
That positive side is what is being talked about in the first reading and the Gospel today. The first reading was from 2 Maccabees. 1 and 2 Maccabees both chronicle a Jewish revolt against an attempt by the Greeks to assimilate the Jews into Greek culture and religion. Here we learn about the mother with seven sons who were being forced to eat pork, a big “no no” in Jewish dietary laws. The gentile king thought he could force all Jews to comply by threatening them with torture and death. Imagine the surprise of the king and his attendants when they saw that these seven brothers and their mother would rather die than go against God's laws. They did this because they recognized that there was something more important than this life on earth: there is also eternal life in heaven. Consider some of the things that they said. One brother says, “The King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.” The forth is even more bold and says, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.” Not only did he reiterate what his brothers had said before, but he even added a parting shot to his persecutors. They knew they were going to heaven. They knew there was life after death.
In the Gospel, some Sadducees are attempting to trap Jesus with His words. They don't believe in a resurrection, but Jesus did, for obvious reasons. The Sadducees thought they had the perfect trap within Jewish law: if there is a resurrection, if there is life after death, then this woman in the story is legally married to all seven brothers! Why would God have a resurrection if it would result in such a sacrilegious situation? Jesus finally points out, they are missing the point. The important thing is not who is married to who or who has the most kids or who accomplished what on earth. The important thing is having life after death. The important thing is having eternal life with God.
My brothers and sisters, there is no reason to fear death, as long as we have hope for eternal life. Let us ask our Lord and Savior for the grace and the strength to gain such a wonderful and glorious end.
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