S-O-S SUNDAY
2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38
Many traitors have gone out or should we say that Judas is on recruitment campaign for followers? At any rate, Save-our-Souls (S-O-S) Sunday, this Sunday, calls for self-examination or introspection of every Christian, citizen and family member.
Our first reading sets out death sentence as the consequence of betrayal from fellow religionists. Division among the Jews – conservatives against progressives – is at the heart of our first reading. Progressives abandon the customs of their ancestors and campaign for new ways to replace old ways. The Greek imperial culture recruits Jews, converts them via money, conferment of political posts and power, and uses them to destroy their religion (Judaism). Co-existence is missing in the expansionist agenda, it is a wholesale takeover of Judaism. Anyone resisting or remaining faithful to old ways faces death.
A mother and her seven sons teach the source of religious fidelity and resistance to assimilation to contemporary vagaries searching to outlaw difference. Motherhood and maternal influence stir up courage to face death, rather than surrender in the face of martyrdom. A family of seven and their mother mock death, while celebrating immortality and the certitude that God’s love never comes to an end, even in dangerous times.
While betrayal and massacre are the trademark of blood sucking vampires on sale for money and political posts, a mother and her seven sons teach us that resilience only requires remembrance of sacrificial love. Maternal love and sacrifice keep children on the path of religion and righteousness. The death of a mother and her seven sons displays betrayers as back stabbers and killing machines testing the authenticity of faith and love of God in believers.
Today’s gospel teaches symptoms of religious betrayers. If betrayers of their religion and nation receive financial and political reward on earth, according to our first reading, religious leaders can easily become exploiters of religion by being blind to injustice because the status quo is to their advantage!
God is love and invites human beings to love. Where love is absent slavery sets in. Jesus attempts to restore love and dignity to women in religious practices. He refuses the sexual exploitation of women in the false practice of religion.
Jesus stands up to the progressive polygyny that reduces women to sex machine. Jesus challenges a religion that celebrates sexual exploitation in the name of marriage and procreation – a woman passes over like a relay baton or object from brother to brother until her death! Jesus confronts religious leadership with the will of God for every woman, against masquerading sexual slavery of women in marital religious garb.
If a woman and her seven sons face outside betrayers and suffered martyrdom, Jesus dies confronting inside betrayers – the religious leadership. Either way, the weapon of betrayers is death and the power of the faithful is love and resilience.
Two kinds of evil come together in the first and gospel readings. Absence of mutual co-existence or intolerance is the hallmark of our first reading. Our gospel suggests religious injustice as the cancer to cure. Death is the end result for those who oppose religious intolerance and injustice.
S-O-S Sunday teaches how to weather a religious obliteration campaign by traitors. It teaches that death is not what happens to the physical body; rather, death is failing to make Heaven. In fact, the traitors and betrayers in our readings are the killers that need salvaging through the death of Jesus for sinners. Many of such betrayers only confess their sins and accept conversion at martyrs’ display of faith. It was at Jesus’ death on the cross that some confess: “indeed, this is the Son of God”.
S-O-S Sunday teaches readiness to die as the attribute of lovers of God. When our zeal is to kill in God’s name, under any pretext at all, it is the devil that motivates us. A sign that God’s Spirit animates us is our indefatigable desire to save everyone – the good, the bad and the ugly. Love only saves, it never destroys. Hatred kills and exterminates, that’s why it is from the devil.
Martyrdom doesn’t come cheap! St. Paul knows it, so he prays for us, in our second reading: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God
and to the endurance of Christ” (2 Thess 3:5). It is only the grace of God and the imitation of Christ that prepares us to face death for Christ’s sake.
Make no mistake about it, our readings mirror the realities of today as well. Many of us face death and persecution today because of religious intolerance and injustices. There is active secularism that refuses the practice of religion, and religious extremism that refuses religious differences. Countries, religions and families are at war with themselves occasioned by religious fanaticism.
S-O-S Sunday teaches us to brace for martyrdom, armed with love of all. Superior weaponry and the alacrity to attack first are marks of the devil. A child of God outdoes others in love and sacrifice, NEVER in the art of killing, but the art of dying to save others!
The self-examination and introspection our readings call for boil down to one question: are you a betrayer/back stabber/religious opportunist needing conversion? May God hear the S-O-S cries of all persecuted around the world and grant them succor 🙏🏿
Assignment for the Week:
Do something to spread love around you – buying lunch for someone or visiting a lonely person, etc.