The first reading from Maccabees is the touching account of a mother who gives up her seven sons in death to a ruler forcing them to break God's Law. The graphic details of torture the mother witnesses, for each son, would have been enough to break her resolve, but, she and her sons saw righteousness only in death rather than offending God by breaking His law. She advised them "He will give you back life and breath again, because you love his laws more than you love yourself." 2 Mac 7:1, 23
Generally speaking, we are not willing to do what is difficult and opt instead for quick fixes and instant gratification. We have lost sight, it seems, of the temporal nature of our earthly existence, forgetting that we are made for eternity. To have and maintain the proper perspective about heaven and earth requires God's grace and our habitual cooperation with it. Learning and exercising right judgment aren't things we do just once and don't have to revisit, but things that require perseverance lest we get lulled and careless about what really matters.
In our own life, how many times have we bent or broken the law? Perhaps we have committed nothing quite as serious as murder, robbery, plunder, or domestic abuse. Yet cutting ourselves slack for minor offenses soon make us immune to increasingly bigger transgressions. Whenever we are tempted to take shortcuts by bending the Law, let us think of this mother and her sons who were faithful unto death. Let us
remain faithful to God in small things in order to practice faithfulness to Him in big things. What we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. Rom 8:18 We must keep in mind that those who disregard themselves for the sake of the Kingdom, like the seven sons in today's Scripture, will inherit it.
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