What will life be like in heaven—including what will our resurrected bodies be like; what will our relationships be like with loved ones we’ve spent time with on earth; what will our days in heavenly be filled with? Nearly all humans have considered questions like these and I am sure all Catholic priests have been asked similar questions. While there are few specific details in Scripture or in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or in any papal pronouncements, there are some hints from our Savior—including in today’s gospel.

But to begin this consideration we can start with the fact that each Sunday at Mass we, as Roman Catholics, profess the “Creed”—usually called the “Nicene Creed” and officially referred to in its entirety as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, after its origin in the first two Church ecumenical Councils in AD 325 and 381. In it, regarding life after death, we say: (see page 9 in Breaking Bread found in the pew) “I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.” And the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC number 1029) states that: “In the glory of heaven the blessed continue joyfully to fulfill God's will in relation to other men and to all creation. Already they reign with Christ; with him ‘they shall reign for ever and ever.’" But the specifics of life in heaven and our relationships with others, vis-à-vis eternal life, are left to speculation and Church’s teachings. Christ has left us clues.

In today’s Lukan Gospel we hear that a Sadducee, one who does not believe in the resurrection,
questions Jesus’ teaching on life after death with an absurd and complex line of questioning—simply aimed at mocking the idea Christian Resurrection. This unbeliever says: "Teacher, Moses wrote for us, if someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother (Jewish Law). Now there were
seven brothers; the first married a woman but died childless. Then the second and the third married her, and likewise all the seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be? For all seven had been married to her."

While you and I may not have (hopefully) such complex familial relationships, we all have wondered ,who we will see and how we will interact or relate with loved ones in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Will we see Nana or Gampy or Cousin Megan and recognize them as we do now? Will I have a new (and certainly improved if not perfected) body in the Kingdom of Heaven? Will my wife/husband be my wife/husband and my child be my child in Heaven? Jesus sets the Sadducee straight illustrating that he is missing one big point. The Sadducees seem to view the coming age—Eternal Life—similar in terms of the makeup of our relationships. Perhaps he believes that we will continue to marry and have similar if not identical human relationships, and even identical day-to-day activities. Jesus teaches that those who are “deemed worthy of the Resurrection will no longer marry nor be given in marriage but rather they will be ‘like
angels.’” Not that we will become angels, for they are different celestial creatures, but that we will no longer be in this current form, corporeal humans, but rather that we shall be raised up and glorified into a heavenly body. The goals, activities and outcomes of this age—humanity—shall be very different from the Eternal Kingdom. Jesus teaches that by our Resurrection we shall have the “abiding identity of God because we are raised from the dead” and “are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.”

In the second reading today of St. Paul to the Thessalonians we hear that the prayer is not offered for Paul but for the community of believers and for the power of God’s Word, that we shall have faith in His promises and in His steadfastness (of faith). That we shall trust and hope in the life to come, with all of its fullness and perfection, whatever that may be—and while we may not know now, what we do know is that we shall be like Him, glorified and perfected.

Perhaps the question to focus on is not one of “will our relationships be the same”—identical to the parent-child or husband-wife relationships of this world, but rather how can I work more
faithfully to become the “sons and daughters and children of God” in the life to come. It is all about be “grounded” in faith (knowing what our faith
teaches) and living it our day-to-day as best we can, with the gifts and talents given to us by God—and amid the opportunities of the world in which we