Firm in our faith

I return to this ministry after an extended medical leave resulting from having  a "brain bleed" in four areas of the brain.  God spared my life for many reasons and one of those reasons, I believe, is to continue sharing faith with all of you.

In today's first reading, Maccabees 2: 15-29, we encounter Mattathias, a Jew who does not give in to the pressures to worship idols, that is, to obey the king's decree to abandon the faith of his ancestors. He risked his life by confronting "the officers of the king in charge of enforcing the apostasy [and who] came to the city of Modein to organize the sacrifices" to foreign gods.

Every day, like Mattathias,  we are given opportunities to stand firm in the faith of our ancestors. We may be challenged to profess Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior by not lying, cheating, gossiping about our neighbors, berating those who we do not understand, refusing to respond to the cry for help of those fleeing persecution and the violence in their homelands and so on.

Another way to look at this faith challenge is to realize that we might be asked, at any given time, to do for others what we would want others to do for us or to take the time to listen to someone we may prefer to avoid, or, in fact, to go out into "the desert," as Mattathias and those determined to "live according to righteousness and religious custom" did.  It is in that "desert," alone with God, that we are more likely to hear God speaking to our hearts, strengthening us to choose righteousness and reject Satan's temptations to fit it with whoever and whatever is inviting us to "worship idols" or to choose false gods.