In the month of November, at our parish and throughout the Catholic Church, we pray for our dearly departed loved ones in a special way since November is the month of remembrance. We prayed for our dearly departed loved ones in special way on All Saints Day and All Souls Day at the beginning of the month. In that context, we might reflect upon how in Jesus’ day, many people had questions about what life after death would be like, just as many in our modern world struggle with the significance of both life and death as we live out our lives here on earth.
Our 1st reading from the 2nd book of Maccabees takes us almost 2 centuries before Christ, when the Jews in Ancient Israel were struggling to live out their faith against an occupying Greek government that forbid their Jewish religious practices. We hear of a woman and her 7 sons who were arrested by the Greek king; they are subjected to cruel torture in an attempt to get them to eat pork in violation of Jewish religious law. One by one the sons are put to death with their mother as a witness.Yet, they stand firm, willing to die for the faith of their ancestors. We might not understand how being forced to eat pork would be grounds for giving up our lives, but to this family, eating pork was an act of betrayal against God and his laws. The sons were willing to give up their lives with the hope of the resurrection, that the Lord would raise them up after death.
Throughout history, many men and women have given up their lives for the faith, witnesses to the values of the Gospel. As we celebrated All Saints Day on Tuesday of last week, we think of the holy men and women who make up our community of saints. Perhaps we can all think of a lot of martyrs who have given up their lives for the faith. There are other ways one can give up one's life for the faith as well. Last Thursday, we celebrated the feast day of St Martin de Porres. He was born in Peru in 1579, the son of a Spanish nobleman and a free African slave. Martin grew up being discriminated for his racial heritage, and pledged his life as a youth became a servant at a Dominican monastery, because under Peruvian law, he was barred from full-membership in a religious order if he had African or indigenous blood. Yet, Martin persevered, using his gifts to serve as a member of the body of Christ. Because of his compassion and witness, the Order eventually broke the law and allowed him to take his vows as a lay brother in the Dominican order. Martin was legendary for carrying a broom with him everywhere he went, using his broom to sweep out the living quarters of the poor whom his visited. He eventually founded an orphanage, a hospital, and a refuge house for sick animals. In his love and humility, in his life dedicated to Christian service, Martin gave up his life to serve God and God’s holy people. His belief in the resurrection and in the new life he had in Christ allowed him to overcome all the obstacles and challenges in life that he faced in order to dedicate his life to God. Just like the woman and her 7 sons in today’s 1st reading, Martin had no fear of death or of the harm he could suffer at the hand of man.
Our belief in the resurrection, our belief in the salvation we have in Christ, should be the source and summit of our lives. But, like the convoluted situation that the Sadducees posed to Jesus in their questioning of him, perhaps we also have difficulty in fully understanding the connection between the resurrected life that we have after death and the reality of resurrection of Jesus that already brings us new life here on earth. We often see people living in two extremes here on earth. Some in our society seem to think that earthly pleasure is all that matters, that we don’t need faith in God, that instead, we can live by our own man-made laws and our man-made code of morality. On the other extreme, we see some who are zealous in the way they live out their religious faith, trying to obey the letter of the law to the smallest detail, but violating the spirit of God’s love and mercy, finding little joy in the way they live out their faith. When we don’t see the continuity between our lives here on earth and the eternal life that is to come, then we can easily fall into one of these two extremes in the way we live out our life here on earth. God calls us to see our earthly lives and our lives after our earthly death as one continuous journey in the light of our faith. The values of God’s kingdom that guide and lead us in life are to help us progress toward our eternal destiny.
St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Thessalonians that our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father give us encouragement in the graces we receive on our journey of faith, that our hearts are encouraged and strengthened by every good deed and word we undertake for the faith. Paul prayed that we like the Thessalonians be delivered from the perversity and wickedness that can entrap us here on earth, that we place our trust in the way we are instructed in order to live out the true faith. If the decisions we make in this life are uncaring, unloving, self-centered and superficial, if the way we live turns our hearts away from God, then we are not preparing ourselves in the eternal ways of God’s kingdom.
After our earthly life ends, we continue in eternal life in union with God, a point that the mother and her sons in 2nd Maccabees understood when they were willing to die for their faith. Our faith shapes us: we become what we believe and what we practice here on earth. We become what we believe when we enter eternal life in Christ. One of my favorite Catholic authors is Father Ron Rolheiser; his column is often in the Mississippi Catholic newspaper. In his book The Holy Longing, Rolheiser recounts a conversation with a young man of 24 years of age who was dying of cancer. Though this young man was in touch with the severity of his illness and the short time he had left on earth, he reflected that there were things that were worse than dying young – the worse tragedy the young man thought we could go through in life would be to end our lives without loving others and without having expressed our affection to those we love.
I think love of the mother and her sons to live and die for their faith in 2nd Maccabees. I think of the love of missionaries who travel to a foreign land with the knowledge that they may have to give up their lives for the faith they are proclaiming to others. We are called to live in hope, trust, and love. Our faith helps us to let go of our fears, our sins, and our faults. In life and in death, we give ourselves over to God’s love and mercy.
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