Monday, November 17, 2025

 Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, Religious

(I Maccabees 1:10-15.41-43.54-57.62-63; Luke 18:35-43)

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a second century B.C. megalomaniac who might be compared to Iraq’s Sadam Hussein or Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian dictator who used chemical weapons to secure his rule.  Antiochus IV was the son of Antiochus the Great, the Syrian king who wrested control of Palestine from the Egyptians.  Both father and son were great promoters of Hellenism or Greek culture with the son outdoing the father’s zeal.  Antiochus IV’ self-chosen name “Epiphanes” means “god manifest” as he thought of himself as the manifestation of the Greek god Zeus.  In Jerusalem, as today’s first reading reports, Antiochus IV erected a gymnasium fostering Greek learning as well as physical conditioning.  He also forbade circumcision and erected an altar to Zeus in the Temple on which pigs were sacrificed.

Both Books of Maccabees tell the story of how Mattathias, a Jewish priest, and his five sons defeated Antiochus.  The Jewish warriors drove out the foreign enemy and reinstated the Law as the rule of the land.  The story includes the rededication of the Temple which inaugurated the Jewish feast of Hanukkah. The name “Maccabeus,” meaning “Hammer,” was given to Mattathias’ son Judas for his fierce attacks against both Syrian troops and Jewish assimilationists.

Not more than two centuries after the Maccabean victory, Jesus of Nazareth launched his own campaign against foreign rule.  Although he was as courageous a hero as Judas Maccabeus, his force was not physical but spiritual.  By his sacrificial death on the cross, he removed the yoke of evil constraining human freedom for all who turn to him.  In this Eucharist we express our faith in him and receive from him liberation from our sins.