Readings:
1 Maccabees 6:1-13
Luke 20:27-40
Reflection:
I am not sure what lessons need to be learned from the snippet of Babylonian history in our first reading from the Book of Maccabees today. Perhaps that greed, avarice, ruthlessness, violence, and cruelty only and always end up destroying those who walk that path. All you really destroy is yourself. Or perhaps a vicious, self-centered and immoral ruler dying of regret is about ‘karma’, what goes around comes around and will land, fair and square, back on you eventually. And you only have yourself to blame.
However, whatever the outward success enjoyed by those whose only concern is looking after “Number 1”, shallowness, self-preoccupation and superficiality will ultimately rob you of all that really makes life worth living – the deeper joys of genuine love that come from self-transcendence. Our self-worth can never come from what we own or what others think of us – we only ever own what we give away and those to whom we give it.
And, our gospel, the woman married to the seven brothers each of whom died. Jesus was asked ‘Whose wife will she be”. Perhaps the woman should be asked and not have the men decide for her.
Fr Tom McDonough CP the Parish Priest of St.Brigid’s parish Marrickville.