"Hope springs 'eternal' in the human heart." As redeemed people of God we can sing with the psalmist: I shall be filled, when I awake with the sight of your glory, O Lord' amidst the humdrum realities of our lives. Belief in the life after death is what keeps us going in life's struggles for our faith teaches us so! But this 'faith is not given to everyone' (St Paul says) and cannot degenerate into the level of mere speculation like that of the 'bigoted' Sadducees. Clearly their concocted story is meant to trap Jesus but Jesus who is so at one with the Father, speaks of a new relationship after death as children of God.

We affirm the Resurrection every time we celebrate the Eucharist: "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again." Without this hope in God the seven brothers and their mother would have yielded to the king and failed in their struggle to remain true to their principle of serving only the Lord God from whom we come and to whom we go.