In the Hand of God
Homily for Tuesday of the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time
The Book of Wisdom from which the Church draws the first reading for the week days of the 32nd week in Ordinary Time, was written sometime during the last century before the birth of Jesus Christ. The passage that we read today is the clearest statement about the afterlife in all the Hebrew Scriptures.. “God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made them. Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love…”
All of us know that God is a spiritual or heavenly being, and, as such, has no body. Our desire to know more about God and to express our knowledge of God finds us expressing God’s relationship to us by saying: “The souls of the just are in the hand of God.” This beautiful image is used to express God’s care for us. Our hands are the part of our bodies that are involved in our work, our creativity, and our care for one another. Friends greet one another by clasping hands. People in love with one another hold the other’s hand when they are in each other’s presence. Two people who are ready to commit their lives to one another take each other’s hand in marriage. When a religious makes his or her profession of vows, they place their hands in the hands of the leader of their community. When a person is close to death, a loved one may take their hands into their own, holding and caressing them. It is natural, therefore, for the sacred author to speak of the faithfully departed as resting in the hand of God.
As people of faith, we believe that when we hold the hand of Jesus, we trust that he will lead us on the path to his Father. This path can be glorious, but it also can be one of difficulty and suffering. If we trust in Jesus, we know that at the end of our lives, he will welcome us into his kingdom with his outstretched arms that were nailed to the cross for our sake. All he asks is that we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Him.
As a parent lovingly cradles a newborn child in their arms, so, too, does God cradles the faithfully departed who abide with him in love because “grace and mercy are with his holy ones and his care is with the elect.
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