Daily Bible Devotional (Nov 23, 2024)

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

On the last weekday of the Church year, the liturgical calendar chooses chaos. Between the first reading, a strong of prophecies about the mysterious “two witnesses,” and the responsorial psalm, a deliverance of David from God, to the Gospel about the martyred seven brothers of 2 Maccabees and a question about the Resurrection, it seems to be all over the place. 

With all of the chaos that the entirety of the readings seems to create, there is an anchor at the middle of them all in the Psalm. It is the “Rock,” “the stronghold,” and “fortress” to which God is compared in this Psalm. This firm foundation is what delivers David and all of us from the calamity of everything else. 

While there is more cynicism than healthy curiosity in the question of the Sadducees, it is a legitimate question that many well-meaning Christians have asked over two thousand years concerning the uncertainty of the afterlife. Like the Psalm, and the words of Jesus, tell us, we should look to the Lord as our rock, but specifically the solid fact of the Resurrection. This is the rock upon which the Christian faith stands. 

As we end the year, let us unite ourselves in the Body of Christ, the Church, through the Body of Christ, the Eucharist, so that we too can rise with the Body of Christ on the final Last Day.