The texts today in the RomanCatholic Lectionary from the Gospel of Luke and the Book of First Macccabees
show us two rebellions against two conquerors of the land of Israel and give us
an opportunity to consider what determines our course of action against the
forces which may be opposing our Life in the Spirit. Some of the people in the
time of the priest Mattathias, who out of zeal for the traditions of the people
of the Covenant murders the offenders and begins a rebellion, looked at the
adoption of Hellenistic rules and regulation about religion as a kind of modernization,
according to Friar Jude Winkler. This acceptance of the regulation of the state
of religious practice is too present in our so called modern time. The grief of
Jesus over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans after another rebellion
about 200 years after Mattathias is
used by Andy Alexander, S.J. of Creighton University to recall the recent
lament of Pope Francis at Lampedusa that the modern world is losing any ability
to live the grief of those suffering because of our political, social and
economic attitudes, processes and decisions. How will our zeal to live the
invitation of Jesus to intimacy with the Divine present itself in the battle
against forces which work on our indifference to the human cost of the way the
modern world is conquering our sense of basic justice. Our zeal to provide the necessities
of life to our brothers and sisters should motivate our action. The tension is
between using the plough or the sword as it was for Isaiah (Isaiah 2:4) and
Jesus. Let us begin in the model of Jesus with prayer and weeping.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment