‘For they will be made holy who observe holy things in holiness, and those who have been taught them will find a defense.’ (Wisdom 6:10)
Today Holy Mother Church in the first reading reveals the arrogance of King Antiochus who thought that he had all power to do what he wants and contrasts him with the Holy Patriarchs that Jesus himself mentions in the Gospel reading.
A quick glance at today’s Bible reading may fail to find common ground but as we read and ponder and wait on the Holy Spirit, one would be amazed by the wisdom that is hidden, and the lessons one could learn from both. Now how does one become Holy or look at Holiness in the light of the First reading – what prevents one from pursuing Holiness?
What is Holiness?
Holiness, put in simple terms, is man’s constant search and need to look outside of himself or to look much deeper into himself. CCC 2809 says that ‘The holiness of God is the inaccessible center of His eternal mystery’, this is inaccessible and it’s a mystery. If that is the case, how does one achieve it? Or even begin to understand this great Mystery?
In fact, all of God’s nature that we commonly know and refer to – Love, Mercy, Hope is all contained within this inaccessible center called ‘Holiness’. The very first point that one should understand and come in terms with is this – that Holiness is not earned but given, it’s not man’s initiative but God’s. From the time man fell in the garden the pursuit started, not Satan after man, but a Holy God after sinful mankind. This Pursuit is Holiness in action. God going after man to reveal his name, to show himself to Man.
God Reveals Himself
When you read through the pages of the Bible, we will realize that God always answers, not just solutions to our small and big problems but answers by revealing himself. When Moses asked God His name, the great voice from the burning bush proclaimed ‘I am who I am’. This is God, who is ever present and ever living and we see a hint of this in the Gospel reading Luke 20:38 ‘Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”’ Let’s go back to Moses’s question , “What is your name?” The burning bush into which one cannot approach has name; Yes! To the question of Moses the Holy Spirit in our Blessed Mother responded in Luke 1: 49b ‘Holy is his name’.
When God reveals himself, Man is called to look out of himself to gaze into this Burning bush and at that very point the nature in the Bush that is the ‘I AM’, the continuous living force is embedded into the one who gazes. This was the case of all the Holy Souls – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, etc. Wisdom 7:27 talks about this encounter so gracefully ‘Although she is but one, she can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets;’ and this encounter is brought alive every time when Jesus – the wisdom of God calls us to God.
Friend
When this call of God is constant, man becomes God’s friend (John 15:15 ‘I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father), but when man looks away from God he is bound to look into feeding his own fallen nature as we saw in the first reading, when King Antiochus lost all sense of Holiness and reverence and erected abominations on the altars of Jerusalem. When this happened, God’s pursuit of Man stopped; particularly the vice in this King made it difficult or acted as a Hindrance for the Eternal King to have an encounter with him. And the consequences?
He lost Hope – in other words he was gripped in Continual deep Disappointment but that is not the end of the story , this deep disappointment created a light of truth , a true knowledge of Sin and a revelation of the Justice of God (1 Maccabees 6:12 ‘But now I remember the wrong I did in Jerusalem. I seized all its vessels of silver and gold, and I sent to destroy the inhabitants of Judah without good reason.’)
Called
My dear Brother and Sister in Christ, let this serve as a great reminder to each of us that we are called for God – To purse him, to respond to him pursuing us – to be Holy. Any compromise in this regard has grave consequences. Holiness creates a defense around us against all the fallen nature of mankind and the viles of the Devil. As this Holy God pursues us every day in his Son Jesus, in and through the sacraments, the natural thing to do is respond to this Holiness, ‘Here am I Lord, in you I am Alive! He is God not of the dead but of the Living. HE IS HOLY!
