# The Reality of Life After We Die - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 10 Aug 2026, 14 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73269758/the_reality_of_life_after_death_bishop_barron_s_sunday_sermon.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Peace be with you.
[0:01] Speaker 2: Friends are first reading on our gospel for this weekend,
[0:03] Speaker 2: have a special resonance for our time. I think because
[0:06] Speaker 2: they both speak clearly about life after death. Now I
[0:11] Speaker 2: say it has residence for our time because there's coming
[0:14] Speaker 2: more and more to be a dominant secularist or materialist
[0:19] Speaker 2: ideology that says, all there is is the world that
[0:23] Speaker 2: we can see and measure empirically. All there is is
[0:26] Speaker 2: matter in motion. Big bang happened, the world came into being.
[0:30] Speaker 2: Eventually it will pass out of being. We live for
[0:33] Speaker 2: a very short time, and then you know, we die
[0:36] Speaker 2: and our bodies go back into the earth. The universe
[0:39] Speaker 2: itself will wind down. I mean, that's the material secularist
[0:44] Speaker 2: view of the world. It might surprise you to hear this.
[0:48] Speaker 2: It surprises a lot of religious people, but the view
[0:51] Speaker 2: that there is nothing after this life for us was
[0:54] Speaker 2: actually commonly held throughout much of the Old Testament period.
[0:59] Speaker 2: You look at the time of the Old Testament, you'll
[1:01] Speaker 2: find some that begin to make a sort of tentative
[1:04] Speaker 2: reference of an afterlife or.
[1:07] Speaker 1: Toward life after death.
[1:09] Speaker 2: But a lot of the Old Testament the view, the
[1:11] Speaker 2: standard view was you know that death is the end
[1:14] Speaker 2: and we just we go back into the earth. When
[1:18] Speaker 2: the psalmist, for example, praise to the Lord, will can
[1:21] Speaker 2: dust give you praise?
[1:23] Speaker 1: The point he's making is, well, yeah, now that I'm alive,
[1:26] Speaker 1: I can.
[1:26] Speaker 2: Give you praise, But Dust, once I'm gone, I can't
[1:29] Speaker 2: give you any praise.
[1:31] Speaker 1: Well. Our reading at first.
[1:32] Speaker 2: Reading for today is from the second book of Maccabee's
[1:35] Speaker 2: and it's one of the most extraordinary texts in the
[1:38] Speaker 2: Old Testament because it's one of the relatively few Old
[1:42] Speaker 2: Testament passages that clearly indicate the existence of life after death.
[1:48] Speaker 2: And the setting is is fascinating.
[1:52] Speaker 1: So we're looking at the.
[1:54] Speaker 2: Second century BC in Israel, a time when a Hellenizing
[1:59] Speaker 2: culture was trying to impose itself upon Israel.
[2:02] Speaker 1: So here i'm talking about the cultural.
[2:04] Speaker 2: And political descendants of Alexander the Great now moved into this,
[2:07] Speaker 2: you know, part of the world, and they're trying to
[2:09] Speaker 2: impose upon conquered Israel the sort of Greek way of life.
[2:15] Speaker 2: You know, much of that life, you know, we eventually
[2:18] Speaker 2: took in and we've adopted your Greek philosophy and so
[2:20] Speaker 2: on and so forth. But at the time it was
[2:22] Speaker 2: seen by many in Israel as an affront.
[2:27] Speaker 1: It was outrageous.
[2:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting to me that go up and down
[2:31] Speaker 2: the centuries, you'll find conquering nations from ancient times to
[2:34] Speaker 2: our own time always think they're offering something.
[2:38] Speaker 1: Good, you know.
[2:39] Speaker 2: That's why they want to spread their empire around the world.
[2:42] Speaker 2: And the ancient Greeks were no different. They wanted to
[2:44] Speaker 2: hellenize the world. But they met in Israel with strenuous resistance.
[2:52] Speaker 2: It was led by this fellow, Judas Maccabeas. Hence the
[2:55] Speaker 2: Maccabees books, Makabeas just means the hammer. So Judas and
[3:01] Speaker 2: his brothers, Judas and his family gathered a lot of
[3:04] Speaker 2: followers around them, and they resisted this hellenizing influence. They
[3:09] Speaker 2: took up arms against the Greeks. Read the Books of
[3:12] Speaker 2: Maccabees for all the details of those battles. But that's
[3:15] Speaker 2: the setting, everybody, for the story that we read in
[3:19] Speaker 2: our first reading.
[3:20] Speaker 1: And it's so remarkable.
[3:22] Speaker 2: What's happened is this mother and seven of her sons
[3:26] Speaker 2: have been captured and they're being forced to eat pork,
[3:30] Speaker 2: which was against a Jewish law.
[3:33] Speaker 1: The whole probably was.
[3:35] Speaker 2: And we get these people to give in, they'll cause
[3:38] Speaker 2: others to give in. That's the usual method that conquerors use.
[3:41] Speaker 2: If I can get some leaders in the society to
[3:43] Speaker 2: cave in, people will follow suit. So my guess is
[3:46] Speaker 2: this woman and her sons were prominent players, and so
[3:50] Speaker 2: pressure is put on them to give in. Well, they don't,
[3:55] Speaker 2: and what follows is a kind of horrific tale. As
[3:59] Speaker 2: one by one, in the presence of their mother, these
[4:04] Speaker 2: sons are.
[4:04] Speaker 1: Put to death. But the speeches they give.
[4:09] Speaker 2: Before they die are magnificent, and they're at the heart
[4:11] Speaker 2: of our reading. Here's what one says, we are ready
[4:16] Speaker 2: to die rather than to transgress the laws of our ancestors.
[4:22] Speaker 2: And then another son puts out his hands because the
[4:27] Speaker 2: tortures are threatening to cut off his limbs. He says,
[4:32] Speaker 2: it was from Heaven that I receive these for the
[4:36] Speaker 2: sake of his laws. I disdain them from him. I
[4:40] Speaker 2: hope to receive them again. Extraordinary, isn't that He's about
[4:45] Speaker 2: to die, and he holds out his own hand and says,
[4:48] Speaker 2: I disdain them out of love for the law of God.
[4:51] Speaker 2: But at the same time, just as he gave them
[4:54] Speaker 2: to me, I trust he will give them back to
[4:58] Speaker 2: me again. The last brother just before he dies, says this,
[5:05] Speaker 2: it is my choice to die at the hands of men,
[5:09] Speaker 2: with the hope that God gives of being raised up
[5:12] Speaker 2: again by Him again. This was not a common view
[5:17] Speaker 2: in the Old Testament, but here we see it on
[5:20] Speaker 2: vivid display. See, it's more than a story of great courage.
[5:25] Speaker 2: It is that, of course, and we honor these people
[5:28] Speaker 2: for their courage, but it's a story of great theological
[5:33] Speaker 2: significance because of the assertion of belief in life after death.
[5:38] Speaker 1: Notice, please, these.
[5:39] Speaker 2: Young men are not operating out of a sort of
[5:42] Speaker 2: Puritanism or a dualism or a Platonism that would say, sure,
[5:47] Speaker 2: these bodies are fallen, and I'm eager to get rid
[5:51] Speaker 2: of them, and I want to die so I can
[5:53] Speaker 2: go up to heaven.
[5:55] Speaker 1: There's no disdaining of the body in itself.
[6:00] Speaker 2: In the early centuries of the Church, we have the
[6:02] Speaker 2: Gnostic heresy, which said exactly that that the body's a
[6:05] Speaker 2: kind of prison from which the soul belongs to escape.
[6:09] Speaker 1: Well, that's not at all what's animating these brothers. No.
[6:14] Speaker 2: No, they're offering their hands and their tongues and cut
[6:19] Speaker 2: their tongues out the their limbs, their very bodies in
[6:23] Speaker 2: the hope that they will receive them again.
[6:29] Speaker 1: The risen life. See here's the interesting point.
[6:32] Speaker 2: The risen life they're anticipating is not a purely spiritual one,
[6:38] Speaker 2: not Plato's fantasy of a disembodied existence.
[6:44] Speaker 1: Rather, it's one that.
[6:45] Speaker 2: Involves the body raised to a higher pitch of perfection.
[6:54] Speaker 1: You know, I think everybody there are an awful lot of.
[6:56] Speaker 2: Christians who hold to something that's more platonic than biblical.
[7:02] Speaker 2: What I mean is they tend to think of the
[7:04] Speaker 2: afterlife as the soul escaping for the body and going
[7:08] Speaker 2: up to this purely spiritual place called heaven. But see,
[7:11] Speaker 2: that's not the object of Christian hope. What do we
[7:15] Speaker 2: hope for, Not a disembodied, purely spiritual existence.
[7:20] Speaker 1: We hope for the resurrection of the body.
[7:25] Speaker 2: Now in Christ's resurrection from the dead, we see this
[7:29] Speaker 2: now on full display. But how wonderful that in this
[7:31] Speaker 2: story from Maccabee's it's anticipated these seven brothers are giving
[7:38] Speaker 2: voice to this very deep hope to a truly resurrected life. Okay,
[7:45] Speaker 2: against that background, that's why the Church gave us this
[7:48] Speaker 2: reading see as the first reading, because we're meant now
[7:51] Speaker 2: to look at our Gospel in light of it. The
[7:55] Speaker 2: setting is a conversation pretty heated, I imagine, between the
[8:01] Speaker 2: Sadducees and Jesus.
[8:03] Speaker 1: Now, who are the Sadducees.
[8:04] Speaker 2: Well, they were kind of a political religious party within Judaism,
[8:08] Speaker 2: and they had a lot of characteristics. But one of
[8:10] Speaker 2: their characteristics was they and again, to be fair, in
[8:15] Speaker 2: line with the mainstream of a lot of the Old
[8:17] Speaker 2: Testament Tridian, they did not believe in life after death. Well, Jesus,
[8:23] Speaker 2: they can guess from his preaching, does indeed believe in
[8:26] Speaker 2: the resurrection. And so they posed to him and they're
[8:30] Speaker 2: you know, they probably brought their most clever people forward.
[8:33] Speaker 2: It's like you know people today having these political debates
[8:36] Speaker 2: online and someone catches it on camera. Well, it's that
[8:39] Speaker 2: kind of exchange. They proposed what the logicians call a
[8:44] Speaker 2: reduxio aut absurdom, right, a reduction to the absurd when
[8:48] Speaker 2: you take your opponent's position and say, well, look, if
[8:51] Speaker 2: you hold to that and I push it now to
[8:53] Speaker 2: its logical extreme, I'm going to end up with an absurdity.
[8:57] Speaker 2: So the Sadducees posed this famous case. There's this woman
[9:02] Speaker 2: who marries a series of seven brothers and each brother dies. Okay,
[9:09] Speaker 2: so now the woman dies and they go to the afterlife.
[9:13] Speaker 1: Well, whose wife is she? Who's her husband? She married?
[9:17] Speaker 1: All seven prodoks? You out, absurdum.
[9:21] Speaker 2: If you really believe in this life after death, then
[9:23] Speaker 2: how do you make sense of this kind of situation. Well,
[9:28] Speaker 2: Jesus is having none of it. He declares clearly and
[9:34] Speaker 2: strongly his belief in life after death, in the resurrection.
[9:40] Speaker 1: And what's his first evidence?
[9:43] Speaker 2: Moses, so at the very heart of the Old Testament,
[9:47] Speaker 2: speaks of God as the God of Abraham, the God
[9:50] Speaker 2: of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.
[9:53] Speaker 1: God is not a god of dead, but of the living.
[9:56] Speaker 2: So by Moses' time, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long
[10:00] Speaker 2: long dead. And yet and yet God is described as
[10:03] Speaker 2: being the god of these three men. How's that possible unless,
[10:08] Speaker 2: in some sense these three men are still alive. They're
[10:14] Speaker 2: still alive in the presence of God. How's he further
[10:20] Speaker 2: answer the sadducees in the heavenly realm, people will not
[10:27] Speaker 2: marry or be given in marriage. So he just cuts
[10:32] Speaker 2: the dilemma, you know, out from under his feet. But
[10:37] Speaker 2: how come because marriage is a bad thing, because we
[10:40] Speaker 2: can't wait to get up beyond this this world of
[10:43] Speaker 2: bodies and sexuality and marriage and go to a higher
[10:45] Speaker 2: spiritual space. No, no, no no, because in the heavenly realm,
[10:52] Speaker 2: which is an embodied realm, Jews would never think of
[10:55] Speaker 2: it any other way. In the heavenly realm, we will
[10:59] Speaker 2: love of in a manner so intense that it goes
[11:05] Speaker 2: beyond even this most intense expression of love here below
[11:08] Speaker 2: that we call marriage. Not that something less than marriage
[11:13] Speaker 2: is on display in heaven, but rather something much greater
[11:17] Speaker 2: than marriage. There'll be an intimacy with one another that's
[11:22] Speaker 2: possible because we are so intimately joined to God and
[11:26] Speaker 2: through God to each other. So people will not marry
[11:30] Speaker 2: or be given in marriage because something so much greater
[11:33] Speaker 2: than marriage.
[11:35] Speaker 1: Is on display in heaven. Cand Of make a final
[11:39] Speaker 1: point here, everybody's I close.
[11:42] Speaker 2: Something you'll hear from secularist and materialists today is you
[11:45] Speaker 2: religious people that believe in heaven a pie in the
[11:49] Speaker 2: sky when we die. You're the problem because it's all
[11:52] Speaker 2: this fantasizing about another world that leads you to ignore
[11:56] Speaker 2: the injustices and suffering of this world. See that, consummit nonsense,
[12:02] Speaker 2: because it's actually the contrary.
[12:05] Speaker 1: See, if you're a strict materialist.
[12:07] Speaker 2: So this is all there is, this life, this body,
[12:11] Speaker 2: which is going to die and go back in the earth.
[12:12] Speaker 1: The universe is going to fade away.
[12:14] Speaker 2: Why should I particularly care about gross injustices that are
[12:18] Speaker 2: halfway across the globe. Oh, there's a poor kid in
[12:21] Speaker 2: Africa right now who's starving to death and is being
[12:23] Speaker 2: caused by political corruption and injustice. All right, you know
[12:28] Speaker 2: he's gonna die. I'm gonna die, We're all gonna die.
[12:30] Speaker 2: The universe is going to fade away. So who cares?
[12:34] Speaker 2: But now turn around. You're a religious person, and you
[12:37] Speaker 2: believe in life after death. You believe, first of all,
[12:40] Speaker 2: that child suffering right now in Africa, that starving child
[12:45] Speaker 2: was loved into existence by God and is destined for
[12:48] Speaker 2: eternal life with God. Mind you, not just his soul
[12:52] Speaker 2: that escapes from his body, but he himself, body and
[12:57] Speaker 2: soul is destined to live with God. Therefore, of course
[13:00] Speaker 2: I am interested in what's just and right for him.
[13:04] Speaker 2: Of course I'm interested in alleviating his suffering. It's not
[13:08] Speaker 2: the religious person that's indifferent. I'm the contrary. And then
[13:12] Speaker 2: can I just observe everybody who were the greatest social
[13:16] Speaker 2: activists in the twentieth century, Those that made the biggest
[13:18] Speaker 2: difference in terms of social justice, people like Martin Luther
[13:24] Speaker 2: King who believed in life after death, People like John
[13:27] Speaker 2: Paul the Second who believed in life after death, people
[13:30] Speaker 2: like Mohandas Gandhi in India spiritual man that believed in
[13:33] Speaker 2: life after death. Don't bore me with this knar that
[13:38] Speaker 2: somehow religious people are the ones indifferent to the suffering
[13:41] Speaker 2: of this world. I'm the contrary. It's those who believe
[13:45] Speaker 2: as those seven heroic brothers did in the Old Testament,
[13:49] Speaker 2: those who believe as Jesus did in life after death,
[13:52] Speaker 2: that are most committed to justice here below and God
[13:56] Speaker 2: bless you.

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