Tuesday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s first reading and psalm tell us about great persecution. In 2 Maccabees, Eleazar is being forced to eat pork in defiance of the Torah (Law). He chooses torture and death over breaking God’s Law. In Eleazar, we have an early example of the martyrs who have died for their faith throughout the centuries. Before he dies, Eleazar says that he is old and that his death will be an example “of how to die willingly and generously for the revered and holy laws.” In the psalm for today, the lament of the persecuted continues as we pray, “The Lord upholds me.” This simple sentence becomes meaningful in the verses of the psalm. The supplicant speaks of persecution not unlike Eleazar’s, saying that “Many rise up against me! Many are saying of me, ‘There is no salvation for him in God.’” Yet the speaker maintains his faith in the Lord, the Lord who upholds him.
I will admit freely that there is something alien in these readings. I have not ever been physically threatened for my faith in God, and I’m very thankful for that. But what are we, who live without such concrete persecution, to do with such passages? One way to think about these stories of persecution is to search for less dramatic examples of persecution in our own lives. I am not, however, disposed to think this way. We can often become self-righteous and close-minded if we are constantly building our Catholic identity on perceived persecution. Instead, I submit that there is much to be gained from Eleazar’s conviction about dying for the “revered and holy laws.”
In Judaism, those laws now number over 600, and the Jewish understanding of law is somewhat different from ours. For example, most of us would probably not consider eating pork to be a violation of Divine Law. In addition to the Ten Commandments we share with Judaism, what other laws are Christians called to uphold and possibly die for? First and foremost, Christians must uphold the dignity of every human life, from conception to natural death. Doing so may lead us to particular political conclusions but it demands much more of us than our occasional ballots. It requires that we engage in the corporal works of mercy we find in Matthew 25: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, and burying the dead. In a real sense, this is the very content of the Gospel, and the law we must follow. While we live in a place that allows us to practice our faith freely, we must also be willing to die to ourselves to uphold this law.
May we reflect on the “noble example” of Eleazar and delve deeply into these divine commandments, becoming so close to them that we’d rather die than break them.
- Katherine Schimdt