Category: Mark

ORIGEN:

The Savior, too, first granted you this very thing—that you should fall. You were a Gentile. Let the Gentile in you fall. You loved prostitutes. Let the lover of prostitutes in you perish first. You were a sinner. Let the sinner in you fall. Then you can rise again and say, “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him,” and, “If we have been made like him in death, we shall also be like him in resurrection.”

CHRYSOSTOM:

So also you are yourself made king and priest and prophet in the washing of baptism. You are a king by having dashed to earth all the deeds of wickedness and slain your sins. You are a priest in that you offer yourself to God, having sacrificed your body and being yourself slain also, “for if we died with him,” says he, “we shall also live with him.” You are a prophet, knowing what shall be, being inspired of God and sealed. read more

It is interesting to consider the perspective of the Sadducees.  Their opinion about there being no resurrection of the dead was not a popular opinion, but one held mostly by the economically and socially elite.  Their opinions and self-justifications are based on false ideas that assume the next life would basically be like this one.  A devastating lack of hope has undoubtedly fueled their blindness.  Jesus even has to tell them at the end of today’s Gospel that they are greatly misled.  Was it their wealth that misled them?  Was it their apparent success or power?  Those who think they have mastered or can master this world will despair of the next.  Those who recognize the brokenness of this world and the people in it may understand that this is only the beginning of God’s work of re-creation.  The longings for wholeness, peace, happiness, truth, love, etc. aim for something that is not broken.  If these longings of our hearts connect with their author – God Himself – He confirms them. We are only denied the possibility of happiness in this world to the extent that this world is disconnected from its Creator and broken.  God would not create anything that He could not repair.  For broken creatures created in His image and likeness, His grace needs only our willingness to restore us in the flesh beyond the brokenness of death.  Nothing we could imagine would bring us close to the reality of heaven.  We can only approach the reality of heaven by ridding ourselves of the attachments we have to what is broken. read more