Today August 1

Today is the feast of a number of different saints, but we are going to go with the traditional feast of the Maccabees (c. 168 BC), one of the few Old Testament saints (or groups of saints in this case) who are honored in the universal church. The Eastern Church honors, on different dates, SS Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah,. . . even Adam and Eve, but the Western Church only keeps the feast of a few, including today's saints, who take their name from the assumed name of Juda, son of Mathathias, the leader of the Jewish force against the pagan invasion from Syria. Antiochus Epiphanes tried to force them to convert and they refused -- bravely, in the face of torture and death. I especially like the words of an old man called Eleazar (who was privately told by [pagan] friends to just pretend to eat pork [a violation of his religion] and thus escape death without actually violating his conscience). "Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life, lest many of the young should suppose I in my ninetieth year have gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my gray hairs." (2 Macc. 6 - 7) Those of us already with gray hairs can relate and be proud . . .

The seven brothers and their mother were tortured and killed, one after the other (the mother last: "I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of men and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws."). Also the actions of Judas Maccabeus were honorable, for when he discovered on the bodies of the fallen faithful, idols of Jamnia ("which the law forbids Jews to wear") he exhorted the people not to sin and took up a collection for the dead, saying prayers that their sin be forgiven. "In doing this he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection." For this one line Luther rejected the entire book (ostensibly because it was rejected by the Jewish council at Jamnia, who accepted as canonical only those books originally written in Hebrew. Maccabees was written in Greek.). But it's a good line in a thoroughly good -- and divinely inspired -- book.