We have been hearing this week in our first reading from the books of the Maccabees. All week long, the message we were getting was that this life is not all there is. Maybe eating a little pork, or tossing a few grains of incense on a coal in worship of an alien god would save one’s life for now, but upright Jews like Eleazar, and the Maccabee brothers insisted that that kind of life was not a life worth living. The something more to life is our relationship with God, and living without God is not really living at all. Living without God divorces us from who we are and forces us to live like the walking dead.
Today’s reflection leads us to the conclusion that our identity as children of God is something worth fighting for, or even dying for. We give thanks with Judas and his brothers that God has called us to be his children, that he will not abandon us, and that he gives us the grace not to abandon him and abandon who we are. God is faithful and sovereign and if we persevere, we can rededicate the Temple of our lives to the God who made us and gave us life.