Inspired by today's first reading

[floresco]

Although I prefer the extraordinary form of the Mass, today I went to the ordinary form and was pleased that I heard the first reading there. I found it inspiring. It was the story from 2 Maccabees about seven brothers who were tortured and killed for refusing to eat pork. As a Catholic with an affinity for traditional practices and devotions, I have been criticized many times for focusing on trivial external things. People tell me there is something wrong with my faith because I care about such things as my posture when receiving Communion and the clothing I wear to Mass. I suspect that many of these people would consider eating pork to be a trivial external thing too. Yet those brothers were willing to give there lives for it and today the Church holds them up to us as an example of faith.

While it is very true that we should never replace internal faith with exterior actions, this does not make exterior actions a bad thing. Exterior actions can be an expression of our interior faith. Those brothers were willing to die rather than break the dietary laws because keeping those laws was a way of showing their loyalty to God. While I doubt I have the strength to die for it, the little things I do to express my faith have a significance far beyond the acts themselves. I’m trying give God the praise and honour that is His due.

 

[laszlo]

Eating pork for the Jews on that time was equivalent to the attempt during the French revolution, than the promoters of the enlightenment put a nude actress to the altar of the Notre Dame in Paris, and required people to worship her. It was not external thing at all, similar to receiving the Eucharist kneeling or standing or to the tongue of to one’s hand.

Our Church approved these external things, but on that time the Synagogue or the priests never approved to eating pork.

My be you can compare the ‘eating pork’ to the approval of the women priests.

 

[floresco]

Eating pork for the Jews on that time was equivalent to the attempt during the French revolution, than the promoters of the enlightenment put a nude actress to the altar of the Notre Dame in Paris, and required people to worship her. It was not external thing at all, similar to receiving the Eucharist kneeling or standing or to the tongue of to one’s hand.

Of course eating is an external action. (although we could make a case that digestion is internal ) Also there is nothing wrong with eating pork in itself, since God later revealed that it was permitted. The action took on spiritual significance because of the circumstances and because people were using refusal to eat pork to express their faith.

We live in a time in which lack of reverence and respect during worship is a problem. This circumstance gives greater significance to the actions we take to show reverence and respect. We give meaning to these actions by what we are expressing with them. You cannot dismiss someone else’s actions as trivial because you do not know what it means to him. For all you know, that woman wearing a veil to Mass is doing some great spiritual act.