Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)

For: Tuesday, November 9, 2009

32nd Week in Ordinary Time

Memorial: St Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor

From: Wisdom 2:23-3:9

The Origin of Evil and Death
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[23] For God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own
eternity, but through the devil's envy death entered the world, and those who be-
long to his party experience it.

The Death of the Righteous
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[1] But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever
touch them. [2] In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their de-
parture was thought to be an affliction, [3] and their going from us to be their des-
truction; but they are at peace. [4] For though in the sight of men they were pu-
nished, their hope is full of immortality. [5] Having been disciplined a little, they
will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of him-
self; [6] like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering
he accepted them. [7] In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will
run like sparks through the stubble. [8] They will govern nations and rule over
peoples, and the Lord will reign over them for ever. [9] Those who trust in him
will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace
and mercy are upon his elect, and he watches over his holy ones.

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Commentary:

2:21-24. The mistake of the ungodly is to think that nothing lies beyond death.
But this way of thinking stems from the wickedness of their lives which prevents
them from knowing God's purposes and causes them to despise the way upright
people live. The inspired author takes issue with them and spells out God's plan
for man and how death came to be (vv. 23-24). But here again "death” has a far-
reaching meaning: it means losing that incorruptibility which, as the author sees
it, lies beyond physical death. The death that entered the world through the de-
vil's envy, the death experienced by those who belong to the devil's "party”,
means to be reduced to nothing, to become "dishonored corpses” (4:18), through
losing the incorruptibility that comes from God. What the author is saying here

presupposes the Genesis account of how man was created in the image and like-
ness of God (Gen 1:26) and therefore with a seed of immortality, and how the de-
vil tempted man to commit the original sin that resulted in the loss of immortality
(cf. Gen 3-4). But the author of Wisdom goes further than that: he says that only
those who belong to the devil lose the "immortality” (which he terms "incorruption”)
of the human person as an entity made up of soul and body. On the basis of this
interpretation and in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, St Paul teaches
that death, both physical and spiritual, reaches all human beings through the sin
committed by Adam; but Christ, the new Adam, redeems all from death.

The devil, in Greek "diabolos", means "accuser, calumniator” and is the usual
translation given for the Hebrew "Satan". These verses do not quote Genesis ex-
plicitly, but Genesis is in the background, for it is there we find the serpent iden-
tified as God's enemy and man's. The New Testament writers remind us that the
devil was a murderer from the beginning (cf. Jn 8:44); and in its account of the
battle between good and bad angels, the book of Revelation will say: "The great
dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan,
the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9).

3:1-4:20. This passage describes at some length the contrasting situations of the
righteous and the ungodly in this life, in death, and beyond the grave. The author
has consoling things to say to the righteous as regards afflictions; they have eve-
ry reason to hope. But evildoers he describes as foolish; theirs is a fundamental
error which will cause them grief now; any suffering they experience will do them
no good; their death is grievous and so is what lies beyond it: "Two possibilities
are laid open to us at the same time: life and death--and each person will come
to the end that befits him. Life and death are like two types of coin, one belongs
to God and the other to this world, each with its own hallmark: unbelievers deal
in the currency of this world, and those who have remained faithful through love
carry the coin of God the Father, which is marked with Jesus Christ. If we are
not ready to die for him or to imitate his passion, we will not have his life within
us” (St Ignatius of Antioch, "Ad Magnesios", 5, 2).

3:1-9. These very poetic lines convey very well the notion of the reward that awaits
the just in the after-life, but they are not very specific about it. The author uses ex-
pressions that correspond to the time in history and Revelation in which he lives,
but they do enable us to get an idea of the state of the blessed: "The souls of the
righteous are in the hands of God, and no torment will ever touch them” (v. 1); the
righteous dead are "at peace” (v. 3), that is, in the sphere proper to God; they can
be sure of immortality, "athanasia" (v. 4). They will abide in the Kingdom of God
forever and share in God's power to judge and rule (v. 8; cf. Mt 19:28)--a pointer to
their power of intercession. One could say that the most encouraging line of all is,
"the faithful will abide with him in love” (v. 9). Still to come is the explicit New Tes-
tament revelation which tells us that the blessed "shall see God as he is” (1 Jn 3:
2), not as in a (dull) mirror but "face to face”; they will know him as he knows
them (cf. 1 Cor 13:12) and they will be with Christ forever in heaven (cf. 1 Thess
4:17).

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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries".  Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.  We encourage readers to purchase
The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.

"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ."  --  St Jerome

"The Father uttered one Word; that Word is His Son, and He utters Him forever
in everlasting silence: and in silence the soul has to hear it.
   --  St John of the Cross