what a mother

2 Maccabees 7:1,20-32; Ps 17 Lord, when your glory appears, my joy will be full; Luke 19:11-28

Here we go again. Yesterday we raised our heads and saluted the true man of faith, Eleazar, who was unwillingly to live a life of pretense when it came to his faith and chose to live a life of loyalty to God and thus die an honorable death.

He was a man's man.

Well, today we look toward the opposite sex. In today's first reading we encounter a women who is true to her faith.

The reading begins with these lines, "It happened that seven brothers with their mother were arrested and tortured with whips and scourages by the king, to force them to eat pork in violation of God's law."

What a way to begin a reading.

The stage is set. A mother and her seven sons are being persecuted. You know things are going to go well.

The very next line in the reading is very teling, "Most admirable and worthy of everlasting remembrance was the mother,who saw her seven sons perish in a single day, yet bore it courageously because of her hope in the Lord."

Then the reading continues, "filled with a noble spirit that stirred her womanly heart with manly courage, she exhorted each of them..."

But first a question: why does a "womanly" heart need to be equated with "manly" courage? Surely, women are way more capable of being courageous in their own right without having to be compared to men in order to get notoriety.

Just a side note. What would it look like to say that a manly heart is filled with womanly ocurage? Becasue let's face it, to go through child birth requires quite a abit of courage, more than I have seen in a "manly" heart as of late.


The mother spoke thus:

"I do not know how you came into existence in my womb; it was not I who gave you the breath of life, nor was it I who set in order the elements of which each of you is composed. Therefore, since it is the Creator of the universe who shapes each man's beginning, as he brings about the origin of everything, he, in his mercy, will give you back both breath and life, because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his law."

Wow! What a mother!
She is a true witness of womanhood.


When is the last time we saw this kind of love? How often do we make excuses for ourselves? How often do we excuse our chidlren from living the faith in hopes that we don't make it uncomfortable for them? Yet, here we disocver what it means when Jesus tells us in the gospel of Luke 14 that unless we hate our mother, brothers, chidlren, we cannot be his disciples.

What good is it for our chidlren to survive if they lose their souls in the process? Have we really helped them if this is the case?