Looking over the Readings for Sunday, the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, I am reminded of my post from yesterday, on the Communion of Saints. My point, yesterday, was the spiritual bond that exists among those living presently, those in Purgatory, and those in heaven. This Sunday's Readings, 2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14 and the Gospel of Luke 20: 27-38, mention this.
In Maccabees, seven sons were tortured to death. They went willingly, rather than disdain Yahweh. The fourth son said, while dying,
One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him...
In Luke's Gospel, the Sadducees, who don't believe in the resurrection, tried to trick Jesus by asking him a question about the widow of brothers. Whose wife is she? Jesus told them that our understanding of civil states of union won't matter in heaven. It is so different. In fact, Jesus says,
...He is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to Him, all of them are alive.
That's the Communion of Saints. The dead aren't dead. They are living their eternal lives with God.
Even John Lennon said, death is like getting out of one car and into the next.
