ncjohn:
Are you ready to watch your spouse or one of your kids die for their faith?
One honorable woman was…
2Mac.7:20-41
The mother was especially admirable and worthy of honorable memory. Though she saw her seven sons perish within a single day, she bore it with good courage because of her hope in the Lord.
She encouraged each of them in the language of their fathers. Filled with a noble spirit, she fired her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage, and said to them,
“I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you.
**Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.” **
Antiochus felt that he was being treated with contempt, and he was suspicious of her reproachful tone. The youngest brother being still alive, Antiochus not only appealed to him in words, but promised with oaths that he would make him rich and enviable if he would turn from the ways of his fathers, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs.
Since the young man would not listen to him at all, the king called the mother to him and urged her to advise the youth to save himself.
After much urging on his part, she undertook to persuade her son.
But, leaning close to him, she spoke in their native tongue as follows, deriding the cruel tyrant: "My son, have pity on me. I carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you for three years, and have reared you and brought you up to this point in your life, and have taken care of you.
I beseech you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being.
Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers.
Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again with your brothers."
While she was still speaking, the young man said, “What are you waiting for? I will not obey the king’s command, but I obey the command of the law that was given to our fathers through Moses.
But you, who have contrived all sorts of evil against the Hebrews, will certainly not escape the hands of God.
For we are suffering because of our own sins.
And if our living Lord is angry for a little while, to rebuke and discipline us, he will again be reconciled with his own servants.
But you, unholy wretch, you most defiled of all men, do not be elated in vain and puffed up by uncertain hopes, when you raise your hand against the children of heaven.
You have not yet escaped the judgment of the almighty, all-seeing God.
For
our brothers after enduring a brief suffering have drunk of everflowing life under God’s covenant; but you, by the judgment of God, will receive just punishment for your arrogance.
I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our fathers, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by afflictions and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God,
and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty which has justly fallen on our whole nation.”
The king fell into a rage, and handled him worse than the others, being exasperated at his scorn.
So he died in his integrity, putting his whole trust in the Lord.
Last of all, the mother died, after her sons.
