2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:15-3:5; Luke 20:27-38.

In reply to the question that the Sadducees had posed to trap him about the woman who had had
seven husbands on earth, Jesus above all reaffirms the fact of the resurrection, correcting at the
same time the Sadducees' materialistic caricature of it.

Eternal beatitude is not just an increase and prolongation of terrestrial joys, the maximization of
the pleasures of the flesh and the table. The other life is truly another life, a life of a different
quality. It is true that it is the fulfillment of all man's longings on earth, yet it is infinitely more,
on a different level. "Those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the
resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for
they are like angels."

At the end of the Gospel passage, Jesus explains the reason why there must be life after death.
"That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called
out 'Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,' and he is not God of the
dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive." Where in that is the proof that the dead rise? If
God is defined as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is a God of the living, not of the
dead, then this means that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive somewhere, even if they have
been dead for centuries at the time that God talks to Moses.

Interpreting Jesus' answer to the Sadducees in an erroneous way, some have claimed that
marriage has no follow-up in heaven. But with his reply Jesus rejects the caricature that the
Sadducees present of heaven, a caricature that suggests that it is a simple continuation of the
earthly relationships of the spouses. He does not deny that they might rediscover in God the
bond that united them on earth.

Is it possible that a husband and wife, after a life that brought them into relation with God
through the miracle of creation, will not in eternal life have anything more in common, as if all
were forgotten, lost? Would this not be contrary to Jesus' word according to which that which
God has united must not be divided? If God united them on earth, how could he divide them in
heaven? Could an entire life spent together end in nothing without betraying the meaning of this
present life, which is a preparation for the kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth?

It is Scripture itself, and not only the natural desire of the husband and wife, that supports this
hope. Marriage, Scripture says, is "a great sacrament" because it symbolizes the union between
Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Is it possible that it be eliminated in the heavenly
Jerusalem, where there will be celebrated the eternal wedding feast of Christ and the Church of
which the marriage of man and woman is an image?

According to this vision, matrimony does not entirely end with death but is transfigured,
spiritualized -- it loses those limits that mark life on earth -- in the same way that the bonds
between parents and children or between friends will not be forgotten. In the preface of the Mass
for the dead, the liturgy says that with death "life is changed, not taken away"; the same must be
said of marriage, which is an integral part of life.

But what about those who have had a negative experience of earthly marriage, an experience of
misunderstanding and suffering? Should not this idea that the marital bond will not break at
death be for them, rather than a consolation, a reason for fear? No, for in the passage from time
to eternity the good remains and evil falls away. The love that united them, perhaps for only a
brief time, remains; defects, misunderstandings, suffering that they inflicted on each other, will
fall away. Many spouses will experience true love for each other only when they will be reunited
"in God," and with this love there will be the joy and fullness of the union that they did not
know on earth. This is also what happens to the love between Faust and Margaret in Goethe's
story: "Only in heaven the unreachable -- that is, the total and pacific union between two
creatures who love each other -- will become reality." In God all will be understood, all will be
excused, all will be forgiven.

And what can be said about those who have been legitimately married to different people,
widowers and widows who have remarried. (This was the case presented to Jesus of the seven
brothers who successively had the same woman as their wife.) Even for them we must repeat the
same thing: That which was truly love and self-surrender between each of the husbands or
wives, being objectively a good coming from God, will not be dissolved. In heaven there will
not be rivalry in love or jealousy. These things do not belong to true love but to the intrinsic
limits of the creature.