Today our first reading comes from the 2nd Book of Maccabees. It takes place over 2000 years ago, but the lesson is apropos for today.

The backstory is that there is a move in the gentile occupied Jewish land to create peace by mixing the religions together. Today, we call this syncretism. Basically the teaching is that instead of all these religions worshiping God in conflicting ways, if we as humans create one religion that takes a little of each of them, we will build one big happy world. If this teaching sounds familiar it is one that is being strongly encouraged in the western world today.

The faithful Jews see this as abandoning their God, and their faith handed down from Abraham. They refuse. What we see in this reading is a simple situation of bizarre circumstances. Simply they are asked to either eat pork, forbidden by Jewish law, or to be tortured to death. It is literally the situation where you could forced to choose either to eat a bacon and egg breakfast at your favorite restaurant or to be tortured to death. Please bring your receipt from your breakfast to the city clerk and you will be taken off the “to be tortured to death” list.

If forced into this situation what would you do? Notice the absurdity of the situation. In the name of national peace they are forcing people to act against their faith under pains of being tortured to death. Where does such absurdity come from and why does it raise its head over the millennia.

I want you to look at this more closely because although at present this absurd situation does not exist, elements of it do. People in the name of peace are calling you to abandon your Catholic faith They are acting as if we turn from Christ then we can build utopia, but that assumes that our leaders whether they be political, cultural, etc have the secret to creating the perfect world. Our faith teaches us that only in Christ can we find the perfect world. Every time we seek to create it outside of Him, we fail miserably. Further, our perfect world will only come in Heaven and never here. Start naming the names of those who sought to create Utopia on Earth over the past 100 years: Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Trujillo, Mao, Che, the list goes on and in every case they created one group of people to be eliminated so that another group of people could live in peace. You cannot build a perfect world by seeking to destroy whole elements of the human race.

Our choice everyday is whom we will seek. Will we seek those influenced by the idea that humans can create Utopia, humans who have a flaw that makes us

unable to create Utopia? Or will you seek the perfection of Christ who gave himself so that others can live? The key is to be able to see this dichotomy at work around us. Once we see it, we understand it and can act appropriately.

You are currently surrounded by people who see your abandoning your faith as their ticket to happiness, that is why you see so many attacks on the Catholic faith especially in the media and in the culture. In the mind of some cultural leaders, you stand in the way of people living in a perfect society. You stand in the way of scientists creating the perfect human being, and if you don’t think that is in the minds of some of our medical professionals then you need to understand that is one of the goals of some movements: to create an environment where you can design your own children.

The problem is that these Utopian movements will collapse in on themselves and when they do, who will be there to pick up the pieces? If we all join the movements, then nobody. If you live your faith, albeit under some opposition now, there will come a time where you will know Utopia with Christ in Heaven. You have a hope that that our opponents don’t have, for you put your hope in the one who gave all He had that you may be saved, not in those who will do what is necessary to build their perfect world with or without you.

I always remember when I was a teen this man had this game where the object was to make a ball pass a pin and then return and knock down a pin. Turns out it can only be done with magnets, it is a physical impossibility. Likewise, anyone who tells you that you can build a perfect world is self-deceived, but if they attempt it, they may take any step necessary to attempt to create it, even eliminating you. Our history is littered with people who did this, even in this country. We did, after all, have programs of forced sterilization in the United States thanks to the eugenics movements (which began in the US). Our faith is outside these circles, and the promises of our faith are outside them as well. Everyday we make a choice to be in or out of these circles. The choice is ours, but I would rather be in the circle of the Church triumphant than that of those who failed yet again in creating the perfect world.

God Bless You,

Father Robert J Carr

Fr. Carr is an alliance member of the New Song Community (Canção Nova). He is the pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Somerville, MA and is the editor of this blog. He is also the author of a blog directed specifically to priests. That can be found at thesacramentallife.blogspot.com

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