Vigils Reading

A Commentary on the Second Book of Maccabees by Damasus Winzen ¹

In the books of Maccabees the opposition between Judaism and Hellenism reaches its climax, but these books also point to the eventual absorption of both Judaism and Hellenism into the unity of the far higher Christian revelation. Hellenism cultivated the idea of harmony between beauty and goodness through equal devekopment of mind and body but it scoffed at the idea of the resurrection of the flesh, and thus rejected what would have been its own last fulfillment. The ideals of Judaism, on the other hand, transcended this visible world to such a degree that the human body did not seem to matter much. The books of Maccabees put before us the ideal of the martyr. He reaches the unity of mind and body by completely surrendering both as a sacrifice ro God for the redemption of the people. In martyrdom the spirit of God’s selfless love takes absolute possession of the body, and therefore leads to the resurrection of the flesh. The story of the Maccabeab brothers points to the “faithful martyr”, Jesus Christ, who judged Hellenism when he said: “Whoever loves his life (i.e. the whole person, mind and body) will lose it; whoever hates his life in this world, will keep it for eternal life”. Through his passion and glorification the Word of God made flesh fulfilled the ultimate aims both of Judaism and of Hellenism. The latter had rejected the idea of the resurrection of the flesh because it did not know the omnipotence of the Creator. Judaism did not understand how God could become man and die for sinners, because it had not grasped the fullness of his love. Christianity accepted both in the risen Christ who lives in every member of his mystical body.

The Maccabees lived and died for the temple and for the law. Ultimately their struggle ended in failure, because the Jews showed themselves unable to reconcile the two. The bitter antagonism between the men of the temple, the Saducees and the high priests, and the men of the law, the scribes and Pharisees, contributed much to the final destruction of the temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. In the mantime temple and law, body and mind, had found their true unity in the word of God made man. With the coming of the reality the shadows vanished. Judaism was fulfilled in Christ. In the martyrs of the books of Maccabees it touched the very heart of Christianity, the resurrection. By the fact that the Church numbers these heroes of Judaism among her saints, celebrating their anniversary on the first of August, she shows that she is the heir of Judaism. Christ brought that peacebetween Judaism and Hellenism which the heroism of the Maccabees was not able to achieve.

1Pathways in Scripture – Damasus Winzen – Word of Life – Ann Arbor, MI – 1976 – pg 157