32nd Sunday - Faith of the Martyrs
I remember a few
years ago, in the age before internet memes, we had popular t-shirts with
saying on them. There was one brand,
"no fear" that came up with all sorts of interesting sayings. There's one I always remember. "It's not the pace of life that concerns
me, it's the sudden stop at the end."
There's no doubt
that we live in a crazy world. Most of
us stress each day about how we're doing to make ends meet, about how we will
manage tomorrow. Sometimes the whole
world can seem so overwhelming that it's hard to grasp next month or next week,
let alone eternity. Yet, at the same
time, there something fundamentally different when we really think of eternity. Every year, during November, our Church asks
us to confront the harsh realities of life, our mortality, the end of our
lives, the end of the world, and what eternity really means.
Think of the times
in our lives if we've really ever be confronted face to face with our own
mortality. Perhaps it was a sickness and
we weren't sure if someone close to us was going to make it. Maybe it was a time when we felt really threatened. Perhaps we were just in a moment of crisis
when it felt like our whole world was about to fall apart. However it happened. When we encounter those moments in our
lives, we get a strong sense of why eternity matters. At those moments, If eternity doesn't matter,
nothing else does.
I know many of us
grew up with stories of the horrors of world war two and the holocaust. Most of us have seen the films, perhaps some
of us have actually met and spoken to holocaust survivors. The holocaust, really is the only event in
recent history where real persecution was done on such a scale that the whole
world took notice. We know the image of
the concentration camp, we get chills when we realize what went on there.
If we take that
image, and imagine a world where all you had to do to escape that would be to
say you don't believe in Jesus, or to choose to eat meat on a Friday in lent,
or to agree to use birth control, or in some real way take an act to reject our
faith. Imagine, each day, dealing with
that sort of torture, yet still standing of for what we all believe, knowing
that if you would just let it go, you could be free and clear. We have to ask ourselves, what would I
do...really?
Yet, that was
precisely the situation the seven brothers and their mother were in the story
today from the book of macabees. It's
hard to even imagine life in that world, or the horrors of the story, seven
brothers, forced to watch as one after another were given a choice, their faith
or their life. Yet, each of them in turn
made the same decision, they said "it is my choice to die at the hands of
men with the hope God gives of being raised up by him." It's hard for us to imagine that sort of
faith. In the face of death, there are
no excuses, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, there is only now, and
eternity. In that moment, a person has
to choose.
How could we not
admire that kind of faith? When we see
someone like that, we're left with a choice, Do I want to be like them, or do I
think they're crazy, off their rocker. Am
I so concerned about the here and now, that I can forget about eternity? Do I think eternity is so far off, that I can
worry about it later? Or do I recognize
that even if I'm not put into that situation, the reality is that each and
every one of us will die someday. Each
of us will have to stand before God to give an account of our lives. So the real questions for us to ask ourselves
as we approach this time at the end of the Church year are simple ones. Does eternity scare me? Am I preparing for eternity right now? Am I as concerned about my eternal salvation
as I am about what I'm doing for lunch tomorrow, and paying my bills at the end
of the month. Of course those bills and
responsibilities are very important, but when the day comes for me to give an
account of my life, what have I done to really prepare for that day.
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