God of the Living None of us likes to have our selves ridiculed. We don’t like our profession, our race or our ethnic background, our religious affiliation to be the butt of a joke. The Sadducees in our gospel today ridicule Jesus and everyone who believes in life after death. Rather than putting them down with a retort, Jesus uses the opportunity to teach about what is fundamental to his life and mission. Jesus lived and ministered as one in tune with the God of the living. All his encounters with others were life-giving. His promise of new life and our own hope of sharing in eternal life are based on the very way he lived-seeing life even where others thought there was only death. Jesus reached out to those whom others considered “dead”: lepers, sinners, outcasts. His relationship with the God of the living enabled him to bring even these people in touch with new life. Like Jesus, we also must spend our lives deepening our relationship with the God of life and sharing this with others. We do so through concrete choices and actions directed to their good. We thus attest to God’s life acting through us now – the promise and hope of future glory within us,