As we enter November in the northern hemisphere, we become conscious of the dying of the year, the death of life as we know it, and what lies beyond death. Discord in the U.S., the threat and reality of war in many places, the decline of civility in public discourse, and the climate crisis all threaten to tear the bonds that hold us together. We may even feel that our very culture and indeed our planet are headed toward death. Today’s readings, however, offer faith and hope, courage in suffering, and trust in eternal life.

The Seleucid Greek King Antiochus IV forbade the Jews in his kingdom to observe God’s law, and mandated that they take on Greek customs. But the Jewish Maccabees refused to comply. Seven of them and their mother were subjected to torture and died courageously rather than forsake their hope in God and in resurrection.

Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians assures them that God will strengthen them, guard them from evil, and encourage them as they wait in hope for the coming of Christ. In the gospel, the Sadducees try to trip-up Jesus by presenting him with a scenario in which the afterlife is exactly like this one. Jesus sidesteps the trap by quoting Moses, ”God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All are alive for him.”

Today, as Pope Francis points out in Laudato Si’, our world is suffering at the hands of humans – those actually entrusted with its stewardship. For those of us who lament environmental degradation like climate change, and those who experience it first-hand, it is understandably easy to become discouraged. Yet, as signs of the climate crisis multiply, we might turn to the words of Joanna Macy: “Our inseparability – from each other and from the fragile, miraculous web of life – is the ground of both our faith and our power to act.”

Radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey (1918-2009) who, at the peak of his 40-year career, was heard on 1,600 radio stations by 24 million people weekly, was best known for what he called, “The Rest of the Story.” In that segment, he’d feature some well-known person or event and then supply his listeners with some added and perhaps previously unknown information that completed the story and made it all the more fascinating. Hence, the rest of the story. Perhaps if Harvey’s technique were applied to other forms of proclamation, say for example, the sacred texts around which we regularly gather for spiritual nourishment, our knowledge and experience of the Word would be more complete….

On this occasion, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, presented Jesus with questions intended to provoke an argument. But Jesus, not to be drawn in by them, offered them a counterchallenge, citing the only authority the Sadducees accepted — Moses. Jesus explained that when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3), God was identified as the God of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Though they had been dead for centuries, if God is truly the God of the living, they must somehow be alive, argued Jesus.

Jesus’ statement implied that when God has a relationship with someone, as God did with the patriarchs, that relationship is never dissolved, not even by death. Asserting his conviction about the resurrection, Jesus challenged the Sadducees, who quoted the Mosaic Law on levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5; Genesis 38:8), to accept the same Mosaic authority on immortality.