Incarnation, Resurrection and Holy Trinity Secular Culture / Maccabees

Today is the thirty second Sunday in ordinary time. We are two weeks away from the solemnity of Christ the King and three weeks from the start of Advent on December 2nd. Advent like Lent is a penitential season. Lent prepares us to enter fully into the suffering and death of Christ and His Joyful resurrection on Easter Sunday. Advent prepares us for Jesus birth at Bethlehem through Mary, His Virgin Mother. The resurrection and the incarnation and nativity of the Son of God are the great mysteries of our holy religion. The Holy Trinity being a third. God sent His Son to become one of us and so to rescue us who had been lost; rescued by one like ourselves. To be lost is a frightful realization. Often we don’t know we are lost even through the feeling of abandonment is in us.

When I was five years old, my mother sent me to kindergarten with the nuns at a Catholic school in San Francisco, Our Lady of Victory on Bush Street. The school was at the other end of the city and the bus would pick the children up in the morning and bring them home in the afternoon. On one occasion the bus driver had dropped off everyone but me on the way home. He drove up streets and around corners for what seemed like a long time and gave me no words of assurance about seeing my house which I kept telling him was white. I felt completely lost and without a friend. I was panic stricken when I thought all was hopeless, the bus pulled up in front of my white house and there was my mother standing in front of it on the sidewalk. The bus had the smell of engine exhaust fumes and to this day if I smell those fumes I think of the experience of disconnectedness and loss.

The scriptures today have the number seven in them, a number which for some signifies luck and the opening of doors to good fortune.

The first reading from the Old Testament 2nd book of Maccabees is about a mother and her seven sons who refuse to bow down and obey the secular culture of their day. A pagan ruler had gotten control of Judas and had profaned their God Yahweh and His covenant and the temple and was forcing the people to comply under the guise of unity which was really disobedience and dishonor of almighty God.

The sons were threatened with death and they willingly forfeited their lives rather than renounce the practice of their faith. Their mother encouraged them. The Scripture passage shows that they put their faith in the resurrection. “God gives hope of being raised up by Him.”

St. Paul, in 1Cor tells us about the meaning of the resurrection. In the 58 verses of chapter 15 he says, “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall all indeed rise, but we shall not all be changed .In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall raise incorruptable and we shall be changed. For this corruptible body must put on incorruption. And this mortal body puts on immortality. Incorruption is dealt with in purgatory provided one dies in sanctifying grace. If God raised Jesus from the dead and if you are in Christ and believe, He will raise you up also.”

The Gospel reading also contains the number seven and has to do with the resurrection. And in the example of earthly marriage makes clear that earthly human natural relations are not to be found in heaven where the human body rejoined to the immortal soul is incorruptible and spiritually glorified at the resurrection.

At the conclusion of ordinary time as we enter advent the Church speaks about all saints and the souls in purgatory and reminds us of eschatological things, the last things heaven, hell, purgatory and the particular and general judgment.

Today there are books on the national best seller lists that claim that religion and God are a fraud and harmful to the good of mankind. A similar sentiment that was fought against in the second century B. C. By the seven brothers and their mother in the book of Maccabees. They were willing to give up their lives for the truth.

There are two other publications that have been reviewed this year which are provocative. One is a book titled “Houses of Worship” and a Time Magazine cover story on a book called “The case for teaching the bible” which also suggests a case for not teaching the bible. The first is a review of the social gospel of the protestants of 100 years ago which would give us Christianity without salvation and the second results in religion without truth. In secularism all moral norms are reduced to a culture of the common denominator, the least intrusive, the least burdensome. Truth and salvation are abandoned. Christ and the life are not one way among many, but are the only way because they are ordained by God for man’s salvation. Christ’s words are, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The Maccabees fought against the one size fits all secular culture and defied the odds which were not in their favor because they believed in the life to come, the life that would not end. The creed says that Christ descended into hell for the sake of those like the Maccabees.

The mother of the five year old boy who felt lost on the bus and didn’t think he would see his white house again died two years later. But the mother of Jesus took her place and has remained with him ever since.

As Jesus died on the cross, He looked down upon the apostle whom he loved and said, “Son, behold your mother.” And to His mother, He said “Woman, behold your son.”

The three great mysteries of the church are the incarnation, the resurrection and the Blessed Trinity. Mary is included in all three intimately. She is the daughter of God the Father, the Mother of God the Son and the Spouse of God the Holy Spirit.

Mary said of her son “Do whatever he tells you.”

In this age of confusion, doubt and uncertainty it is Mary who will safely lead us to her Son. Mary is my mother and she is yours as well. Our Lady of Victory.