Catechesis Notes for Week — Summer Stories from the Gospel of Luke — The Sadducees Question Jesus about the Resurrection because they did not believe in the resurrection or life after death, yet they claimed to be faithful to the Law of Moses. Jesus used Moses’ words to counter them: “Now even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”  The account of the Widow’s Two Mites contrasts the false faith of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes with the true faith of the widow who, without pretense or an attempt to justify herself before others, put into the Temple treasury all she had. Jesus catechesis during Holy Week then shifts to a discussion of the Signs of the End and the Destruction of Jerusalem. The destruction of the Temple, the rise of false doctrine, wars, earthquakes, famine, pestilence, and persecution will all characterize the end times before the Second Coming of Christ. Finally, the Parable of the Fig Tree concludes Jesus’ catechesis on the end times. As the change in the leaves of the fig tree indicate that summer is near, so these signs of the end times indicate that Christ’s coming is near. The Church is to live each day in anticipation of His coming with fervent faith in His Words to the end: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. But take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.”CP250817