No Marriage in Heaven
November 11, 2007

Readings for the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading 1: 2 Mac. 7, 1–2, 9–14

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 17, 1, 5–6, 8, 15

Reading 2: 2 Thes. 2, 16–3, 5

Gospel: Lk. 20, 27–38

Link to Readings

By Father Ray Ryland, Ph.D., J.D.

The Sadducees of Jesus’ time denied resurrection of the body, immortality of the soul, and any kind of life in a world to come. For them, the only sacred writings were those of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Since the Pentateuch does not speak of resurrection, they claimed there must be no such thing.

Today’s Gospel tells us a group of them came to Jesus with the apparent object of learning from Him. In fact, they came to pose a trick question to Him, hoping thereby to show the absurdity of believing in the resurrection of the body. They appealed to a common Jewish tradition called the “levirate,” a word meaning “brother-in-law.”

This was what the “levirate” decreed. If a man died childless, his widow was obligated to marry one of his brothers to produce children to carry on the deceased husband’s name. The Sadducees posed a hypothetical situation and asked Jesus a question. Following the law of the levirate, they said, seven brothers were successively married to one woman. Now, they said: if there is resurrection in a next life, whose wife will she be there?

Jesus ignored the Sadducees’ obvious motive for asking the question. Instead, He proclaimed the truth to them in a two-fold response.

The God of the Living

First of all, Jesus referred the Sadducees to their own scripture. He quoted Exodus 3:6: At the burning bush, God said to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus’ point was simple. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died many centuries before Moses’ time, but for God they are living persons. As Jesus explained (Lk. 20:38), God “is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.” This makes sense only if one admits the reality of life after death.

Jesus was telling the Sadducees that the Giver of life is above the law of death by which man’s earthly life is ruled. It is true that due to sin, we human beings must undergo physical death. But after our death God, who is the source of all life, renews the life of those who belong to Him. At other times, in other circumstances, Jesus spoke plainly about His own resurrection.

Then secondly, Jesus took the occasion to teach us all about the relationship of marriage and resurrection.

Jesus said, those who rise “from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. . . .” (Lk. 20:35) The institution of marriage, Jesus is telling us, belongs exclusively to our life on earth. Marriage and procreation do not in themselves define what it means to be male or female. They are only expressions of human sexuality in its maleness and femaleness. Never forget that only one Person has been fully, perfectly human—He who is also divine—Jesus Christ—and He was celibate.

Our Homeland is Heaven

The Church speaks of the gift of “integrity” which the first human beings enjoyed. That gift was the total absence of the conflict we now experience between our natural urges and God’s will for our lives. When they still had the gift of integrity, our first parents were completely at peace within themselves. All their desires were completely controlled by their will.

This gift was lost in the Fall. Now even we who are regenerated in baptism still struggle with unruly desires and fears. At the resurrection, our bodies will return to perfect unity and harmony with the spirit. They will be glorified and made eternal. The Spirit of God will not only dominate our bodies, but will fully permeate them. The gift of integrity, then, once lost by sin of our first parents, will be restored in the resurrection.

Our identity as male or female will not only be preserved, but in fact glorified. Remember that Jesus was taken into heaven as a man. Our Blessed Mother was taken bodily into heaven as a woman. In the resurrection we will be like angels, but we will never become angels: They are a different order of beings.

Sacred Scripture reminds us “our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe” (Phil. 3:20-21, Jer. Bible).

Indeed, Jesus Christ has “subdued the whole universe”: He has redeemed it. And some day, like ourselves, the whole universe will be glorified. We have this promise: “. . . creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

Glorified and Fulfilled

In our glorified state, God will give Himself to us to the fullest extent of our capacity to receive him. (More about this later.) Our response to God’s gift of Himself will concentrate and express all the energies of our whole beings. In other words, the beatific vision itself will give us such complete love for, and concentration on, God that it will absorb our whole beings. Yet not only will there be new depth of relationship with God; there will also be new depth of relationship with those around us.

In heaven, what John Paul the Great called “the nuptial meaning of the body” will find its fulfillment. Repeatedly John Paul taught us that each of us is created in the image and likeness of God. Just as God Himself is a communion of three divine Persons, so our being the image of God is realized in us in a communion of persons.

In this life, the majority of people find this communion most intensely in marriage and procreation. Those called to the priesthood or the religious life or the single state are called to find communion in their total relationship with God, and in other relationships appropriate to their state in life.

In the resurrection state (heaven), we shall find the ultimate experience of communion in the beatific vision and the resulting Communion of Saints. There, as we have already suggested, we shall enter into such a depth of communion with other persons as we now can only dimly imagine and faintly experience in our most loving, self-giving moments.

Our Capacity to Love

In conclusion, let us keep in mind that the experience of marriage is intended to be preparation for eternal life. The fact that there will be no marriage in heaven is not itself a slight of marriage. It only means that something far greater than marriage awaits those who yearn for and work for the resurrection.

For those called to marriage, marriage is their training ground, so to speak, for heaven. Spouses must learn through their marriage the meaning of yearning for complete union with their beloved. This is like the yearning that ultimately must be directed toward God Himself.

This is the whole point of the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. The book’s tender, poetic descriptions of the love of bride and bridegroom for each other, their yearning for total union with one another: What’s the purpose of this sacred writing? It’s to set before us the necessity of the yearning for God that we must all develop, by His grace. That’s what the great mystics of the Church tell us. That’s why for some of them the Song of Songs is their favorite book of the Old Testament.

Think about this. In our marriages—in all our relationship—are we developing our capacity for love? That capacity will some day determine the extent to which we can share in the beatific vision and in the communion of saints. The Church teaches us that capacity is determined by what we do and become in this life. From the moment of our death, there is no more growth in our capacity for love. Through purgatory we strive toward perfection of whatever capacity we had when we died. That will be our capacity throughout eternity.

Can you imagine a husband telling his wife, “I love you, but I am not interested in cultivating our love and deepening it”?

That is basically what you and I are telling God, when we fail to grow in our love for him day by day, when we fail to grow in our yearning for him, day by day.

Is that really what we want to say to God?

Father Ray Ryland is CUF's spiritual advisor.

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