Religious Education News 

Week 5 

Thursday 3rd November 2022

Dear Parents and Guardians,

This coming week we celebrated two important days in the Catholic Church:

All Saints Day on Tuesday 1st November 

Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical letter Spe Salvi (Saved by hope), once described the life of saints as ‘plunging into the ocean of infinite love… life in the full sense, a plunging ever anew into the vastness of being, in which we are simply overwhelmed with joy.’

The lives of those who have been named as saints by the Church are celebrated today. Their lives were marked by deep love, courage in the face of adversity, a willingness to forgive, a total commitment to Jesus and the other. Their lives still inspire us today. All who follow Christ are called to be saints with a small ‘s’. To continue to live lives that are holy and directed towards God.

Commemoration of all the Faithful Departed on Wednesday 2nd November.

This week’s Gospel 

Luke 20:27- 38

Some Sadducees – those who say that there is no resurrection – approached Jesus and they put this question to him, ‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, that if a man’s married brother dies childless, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Well, then, there were seven brothers. The first, having married a wife, died childless. The second and then the third married the widow. And the same with all seven, they died leaving no children. Finally the woman herself died. Now, at the resurrection, to which of them will she be wife since she had been married to all seven?’

Jesus replied, ‘The children of this world take wives and husbands, but those who are judged worthy of a place in the other world and in the resurrection from the dead do not marry because they can no longer die, for they are the same as the angels, and being children of the resurrection they are sons of God. And Moses himself implies that the dead rise again, in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God, not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all men are in fact alive.’

Gospel Reflection by Greg Sunter

Life after death, in one form or another, is a common belief of most of the major faiths of the world. It is certainly a basic tenet of Christian faith. Because the gospels record Jesus as speaking about an afterlife, we tend to assume that this was a common belief of his time. However, within the different groups of Judaism, there was significant diversity of belief about this point. While the Pharisees believed in resurrection, the Sadducees did not. The Sadducees, whose name means ‘righteous ones’ were an elite group within the Jewish faith. They were purists in their adherence to the Torah and their rejection of any later teachings or writings – this actually put them in conflict with the Pharisees, although the two groups are often portrayed in the gospels as being united against Jesus. Today’s gospel passage depicts an attempt by the Sadducees to ridicule belief in an afterlife by questioning Jesus about an extremely exaggerated scenario.

The reply Jesus gives largely ignores the farcical nature of the question. Rather, Jesus makes clear that the resurrected life is not merely an extension of the earthly life. The things that are of concern in this world are not an issue in the next. Through death and resurrection, life is changed; not ended. This idea can be challenging at a time when we are mourning the loss of a loved one, yet we are called to respond to that challenge with a genuine hope and trust in the life that goes on in a different way. Jesus, in fact, dismisses the whole idea of death as an ending by saying that to God all people are alive, whether on earth or in the resurrection.

Remembrance Day

Next Friday, 11th November, we remember all those men and women who sacrificed their lives at war, for our freedom.  Our school assembly will commence with a Remembrance Liturgy to which you are all warmly welcomed.

The Ode, which is said on the day, is the fourth stanza of Laurence Binyon’s poem titled ‘For The Fallen’.

It reads:

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.”

Have a lovely week!

God Bless!

Mrs Vozzo