The God of the Living

“Sic transit gloria mundi,” is what they used to say at papal coronations. “So passes earthly glory.” Everything is fleeting. Nothing is here to stay. But in reality, some things are forever. Our actions on earth do have the potential to reverberate in eternity.

Everyday Stewardship is a lifestyle that embraces what will last. It is being aware of how our choices and our actions can be received by God, and through His grace, amplified to showcase His glory.

Your great-grandparents were married for 60 years. Maybe they shared the greatest love anyone in your family has ever seen, and maybe they raised up a whole family of kids. But they’ve been gone for a generation now, and no one living remembers the softness in their eyes when they looked at each other. And to read today’s Gospel, you might even get the impression that their marriage was nothing more than an earthly whim. Gone. Fleeting. Temporal.

This week’s readings invite us to contemplate the question: what exactly is immortal? What lasts beyond our earthly sojourn?

The seven brothers and their mothers whose martyrdom is told this weekend in Maccabees didn’t die for the letter of the law, they died for the One who gave the law. In the same way, a marriage contract does not extend into eternity, but the fruits of a sacrificial love will live forever.

Good works, devotion, gratitude, selflessness, graciousness, accountability — these are all of God. He is not God of the dead; He is God of the living — and these are the things that last an eternity.

— Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS