Greetings on this the Saturday of the Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time
Readings: 1 Mc 6:1-13; Ps 9:2-3, 4 and 6, 16 and 19; Lk 20:27-40
Notes: Title of reflection is an attention-getter, not a declaration of fact.
Summary
Today’s readings deal with our self-deception and disbelief. “I am Better. God is Lesser.” Hence, the foggy glasses photo.
About Antiochus
Embracing a form of imperial colonialism, Antiochus sought to bring about a sense of cultural uniformity in the hope of creating more socioeconomic stability.
Antiochus arrived in Jerusalem to find the people in an open state of revolt against him and each other. The chaos he found in Judea immediately followed a humiliating defeat in Egypt, and the ruler took out his frustrations on the Jewish people. Antiochus took control of the situation by slaying many innocents and brutally enforcing his cultural and religious policies on the population. A time of great tribulation occurred as traditional practices such as circumcision were outlawed, sacred scriptures were burned, and violators were brutally punished even unto death.
Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.
Sick with grief because his designs had failed, he took to his bed. There he remained many days, overwhelmed with sorrow, for he knew he was going to die.
The problem of self-deception is found in both readings today. Antiochus, to turn a phrase, ‘believed his own propaganda‘. For the Sadducees they intellectually refused sacred Scripture evidence of Resurrection because they did not believe in the resurrection.
In the first case, the exaggeration of his own goodness. In the second case, the disbelief in the goodness of the LORD. Resurrection to a happy eternal life with God is the ultimate goodness.
Reflection
The question today is do we actually really understand what is going on? The Sadducees, rejected the idea of Resurrection, were squarely confronted about their disbelief. Their question to Jesus, conflating decedent marriage law with eternal life, did not make their point nor invalidate the more substantial point Jesus was making.
Openness to the marvelous and the miraculous does not stifle truth. Rather it brings freedom to truth to reveal all its glory.
Personal Reflection
I must confess the phrase, yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule, has always put shivers down my spine. In what ways am I blind to my crimes (a manner of speaking)?
And like the Sadducees, what truth am I blind to?
“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be (Matt 6:22-23).
It isn’t a crime to be wrong. The crime, against yourself, is to minimize the benevolence of the LORD and maximize our own good will. Be of good cheer! The LORD, in a blink of the eye, can make right all things and order them to the good.
First Reading
So he called in all his Friends and said to them: “Sleep has departed from my eyes, for my heart is sinking with anxiety. I said to myself: ‘Into what tribulation have I come, and in what floods of sorrow am I now! Yet I was kindly and beloved in my rule.’ But I now recall the evils I did in Jerusalem, when I carried away all the vessels of gold and silver that were in it, and for no cause gave orders that the inhabitants of Judah be destroyed. I know that this is why these evils have overtaken me; and now I am dying, in bitter grief, in a foreign land.”
Responsorial
I will rejoice in your salvation, O Lord.
The nations are sunk in the pit they have made;
in the snare they set, their foot is caught.
For the needy shall not always be forgotten,
nor shall the hope of the afflicted forever perish.
Gospel Acclamation
Our Savior Jesus Christ has destroyed death and brought life to light through the Gospel.
Gospel
That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry