Preacher’s Sketchbook:

Each week, a Dominican member of the Province of St. Joseph’s Preaching Advisory Board prepares this Preacher’s Sketchbook in anticipation of the upcoming Sunday Mass. The idea of the Preacher’s Sketchbook is to take quotations from the authority of the Church–the Pope, the Fathers of the Church, documents of the Councils, the saints–that can help spark ideas for the Sunday homily. Just as an artist’s sketchbook preserves ideas for later elaboration, so we hope the Preacher’s Sketchbook will provide some ideas for homiletical elaboration.

**Pope Francis (Lumen Fidei 17):**

Christ’s death discloses the utter reliability of God’s love above all in the light of his resurrection…. Had the Father’s love not caused Jesus to rise from the dead, had it not been able to restore his body to life, then it would not be a completely reliable love, capable of illuminating also the gloom of death…. Our culture has lost its sense of God’s tangible presence and activity in our world. We think that God is to be found in the beyond, on another level of reality, far removed from our everyday relationships. But if this were the case, if God could not act in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and thus not even true, a love capable of delivering the bliss that it promises. It would make no difference at all whether we believed in him or not. Christians, on the contrary, profess their faith in God’s tangible and powerful love which really does act in history and determines its final destiny: a love that can be encountered, a love fully revealed in Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.

Pope Benedict XVI:

The human being’s dream of giving himself immortality is in fact crushed. He is obliged to expect less of his own power and more of love, which he can now receive only as a gift…. Immortality, according to the Christian faith, fundamentally has to do with love. The only eternal thing is love; aslove, God is eternity. And his love, in turn, is man’s eternity; in being loved by eternal love, he is lifted up imperishably…. For him, too, love is the only thing that gives eternity; the measure and manner of his eternity depend on the measure and manner of his loving…. The hope of man and of mankind is love: open to the One who is not at anyone’s disposal, who, far surpassing our accomplishments, bestows on us what no man is able to give: eternal life.

Bl. Henry Suso:

Jesus speaks: “The soul which was humbled on earth will in heaven be royally honored, and its every triumph over evil will be recompensed and praised by my Father and all heavenly host. This is a joy unknown to those who were not acquainted with earthly adversity. Brilliant jewels will glitter in the crown which was purchased at a high price. Glorious and shining will be the wounds and scars which were received for love of me. Believe me, in heaven you will have countless friends, and each one of them will love you more faithfully and tenderly than any father or mother loved an only child in this world.”

Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar:

The brothers are tortured cruelly: flogged to death, robbed of their hacked-off limbs. Yet to the astonishment of their torturers, they endure all of this by referring to the resurrection that will render their bodies whole again. “God has given us hope”, which no one can take away from them, and the limbs loaned to them from on high can eventually be restored. Not only bloody martyrdom but every sort of burdensome earthly trial, which, despite its load, remains as light as a feather in comparison with what has been promised.

Msgr. Romano Guardini:

Eternity is “eternal life.”… Eternal life as understood by the Christian is God; it is the life of God given to man through grace, which he has a share in living…. Imagine if one were to say to a man the following: “The world is yours: all its materials, its treasures, its dangers, its glories, everything it contains; it is given to you for the joy of your eyes, for your full possession and enjoyment, as a problem for you to solve and an object to conquer. And over and above all this, you are given a mind equal to this measureless gift, a heart strong enough to feel it, a capacity to assimilate it and digest it.” Would monotony be possible? Eternal life implies that God is given to us as something before which the whole world vanishes into nothingness. And through grace we are given a share in God’s own power to see, to love, to judge, to possess, to enjoy.

Paul Claudel:

Nothing that we possess here below will be destroyed, with the exception of our defects, but all will be restored and exalted to the highest degree, not only restored but illuminated, as it were, transported from the realm of empirical proof to the realm of intuitive understanding.

St. John Chrysostom:

Wives are married so that the diminution caused by death may be supplied by birth. But death will not be there in heaven and, consequently, neither marriages, nor wives, nor generation