I really enjoy wedding receptions. And as a former wedding DJ, I got to see quite a few of them in my time. One of my favorite moments in wedding receptions was always the Father Daughter Dance. There is something so touching about seeing the love between a dad and his little girl as he enjoys a dance with her on the cusp of her new life as a married woman. I loved watching my Dad dance with two of my sisters at their wedding receptions.
One Father Daughter Dance that especially stands out in my mind is the one between my sister-in-law, Maura, and her dad, Dan. It started out normally enough, with them dancing slowly to “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong, but then there was a needle scratch sound. All of a sudden, the speakers were blaring with a punk rock cover of “What a Wonderful World” and Maura and her dad started jamming out to it together on the dance floor. It was such a cute moment and so fitting, as they were both huge punk rock fans and had enjoyed many concerts together.
These Father Daughter Dances are moving because they represent the passing of the torch, in a way. The love between a father and his daughter voluntarily makes way for a new love, the love between spouses. It’s not as though that first love is gone. It just makes room for a new love which takes precedence.
This image of one love voluntarily making way for a deeper love is at the heart of Jesus’ answer to His critics in the Gospel today. The Sadducees don’t even believe in the resurrection from the dead, so they throw out a crazy scenario about seven brothers all marrying the same wife and all dying. They are doing this to try to make light of the idea that there could be a meaningful life after death, but Jesus won’t take their bait. Instead, He sets aside their absurd hypothetical and speaks to them about the reality of what the new life of Heaven will look like.
Instead of focusing on the earthly law of Moses, Jesus draws them up into the deeper law of God’s love. In the end, that is what Heaven is all about–the all-consuming love of God that completely satisfies all of our desires. The Sadducees are missing the incredible reality of Heaven because they are caught up in the mistake that nothing can be greater than the married love of spouses here on earth. By focusing on that spousal love and their earthly laws regarding that love, they fail to understand that spousal love is a participation in and precursor to the even greater love of God for the Church. In Heaven, this love will be all that matters. Jesus Himself reveals that spousal love for all of us in so many ways–through His care for the lost, through His life-giving words of preaching, and above all through His total gift of Himself for us on the Cross. Jesus’ whole life reveals the depth of God’s love for us all and invites us to respond.
So when Jesus speaks of the children of the coming age, that of heaven, He reminds us that they “neither marry nor are given in marriage.” This is because the spousal love they share on earth is completed and fulfilled by the incredible love of God. Like the love of a father and daughter in response to the spousal love of marriage, one love voluntarily makes way for a deeper love. In Heaven all of us will be consumed with the love of our Heavenly Bridegroom. Nothing compares to this love and nothing could, because when God loves, He gives His whole self to us, because He IS Love. Spouses will still have a deep love for each other in Heaven, don’t get me wrong, but this love will no longer be spousal in an earthly sense because it will give way to the ultimate Spousal love of God.
Even now here on earth, we get tastes of this all-consuming love of God. We encounter the God Who is Love in daily prayer, in the Sacraments — especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation — and in all the countless ways He reveals Himself to us in the ordinary moments of our lives. Our challenge here and now is to put God first in our hearts.
It can be tempting to put the love of our spouses or families before God, because these people are indeed extremely important. But if we fail to let God love us first, we will never know how to correctly love them. It is the same with any of our hobbies or passions. There is nothing wrong with loving the good things of this life, but if we allow our love of those things to draw us away from the love of God who made us, those hobbies and passions will ultimately end up distorting us. Nothing can come before Him, and nothing should. That is the lesson for us today and always.
We see an inspiring example of putting God and His love first in the first reading from Maccabees. To us, it may seem a bit extreme for these seven brothers to be willing to die rather than eat pork. Yet they put their lives on the line not just in defense of a dietary law, but in defense of what that law represented: adherence to their covenant with God. Their hearts were set on loving God and remaining in the family relationship with Him established by the covenant with all of its laws. They didn’t fear death because they believed that the love of God could conquer even death. As the one son says, “It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life.”
This is our call, brothers and sisters, to realize that the love of God has been poured out into our hearts and to not let anything come before that love in this life, so that we can prepare ourselves day by day to enjoy the fullness of that love in the life to come.
+ Heavenly Father, deepen our knowledge of your love in this life so that we put nothing before our love of You. Jesus, continue to pour out your grace in our hearts so that all of our lesser loves would only draw us more fully into love of You. Holy Spirit, help us open our hearts more fully to You so that we can be conduits of your love. We ask this through Christ, Our Lord. Amen. +