Every year we set aside this month of November to remember all those who have died. We call this the month of All Souls. Many many years ago, before I was ordained a priest, the priest would wear black vestments at all funerals and Masses for the Dead. Black of course being the color of death. However, with the onset of the changes in the church during the 1960s we began to wear white vestments because white is the color of life. When we pray for the dead today we are ever more conscious of the fact that death is not an end but a transition to a new life – the life of the Resurrection.
    And that is the thread which runs through our readings today. Resurrection was a controversial notion throughout the Old Testament and even into the time of Jesus Himself. In that first reading today about the torture of seven brothers and their mother, they each face their death affirming their belief that God will raise them up after death to be with Him in heaven. That was the belief of the Jewish Pharisees but not the Sadducees who had a much more literal interpretation of the scriptures.
Then in the Gospel reading some of those same Sadducees come to Jesus with a preposterous example of a widow who married seven brothers trying to have an heir. And they ask, sort of tongue in cheek almost mockingly, whose wife will she be in the Resurrection.   Jesus of course knows their intention of trying to trap Him and He simply says that in heaven things are different than they are on earth. But what Jesus does do is affirm the doctrine of the resurrection in spite of the Sadducees trickery. He tells them that God is the God of the living not of the dead.
And we know that Jesus lived His life with that hope and promise and shared that with all who believe in Him.
As His people we too need to live lives of hope and promise. We need to live realizing that there is more to life than what we know today. We need to realize that Jesus is the center of our lives and He leads us every day closer to that kingdom of heaven and the life of the Resurrection. We need to celebrate that death is not the end but a transition to a new life for all eternity.