Finally, there is the account of the death of the seven Machabees and their heroic mother. All eight were summoned before the pagan king Antiochus and commanded to disobey the law of God by eating food forbidden to Jews. Think much of that wonderful mother. The king began by scourging each person and then "commanded frying pans and brazen cauldrons to be made hot." The eldest boy, who had defied him, was taken first. For his glib words his tongue was torn out, next the skin was stripped off his head, and his arms and legs chopped off. He was still living, so they brought the limbless trunk to throw it into the flames. And that mother and her six boys looked on and encouraged him to endure.
Similar tortures were meted out to each of the others in turn. And the mother "bravely exhorted every one of them in her own language, being filled with wisdom, and joining a man's heart to a woman's thought." Here is what she said to the seventh of her boys, and it is typical of her addresses to the others: "My son ... I beseech thee look upon heaven and earth and all that is in them and consider that God made them out of nothing and mankind also. So shalt thou not fear this tormentor, but being made a worthy partner with thy brethren, receive death, that in that mercy I may receive thee again with thy brethren."
"The mother was to be admired above measure and worthy to be remembered by good men, who beheld her seven sons slain in the space of one day and bore it with a good courage for the hope that she had in God.... And last of all, after the sons, the mother also was consumed."
We can kneel and thank God for the sublime example afforded by that mother. But we can do more. We can thank Him that that spirit is flourishing right in our midst. There are mothers who part with the children they love, because a greater Lover wants them, all for Himself, as missioners and priests and religious. There are mothers whose hearts are full of sorrow because they are keenly conscious of what their boys must be suffering in prison and in concentration camp. The Irish priest, Monsignor Quinlan, recently freed from a camp, tells of five hundred American boys who died there in three months. What brokenhearted mothers they must have had! The spirit of the mother of the Machabees is needed today.
And what will soften the anguish and even heal the pain? The deep spirit of faith that recognizes that God is Lord of all. Those boys are His property more than the property of their human parents. If they suffer, and if their parents suffer with them, the true Catholic will remember that suffering when sanctified is a sort of a sacrament. It gives grace. It opens Our eyes wide and makes us see how futile is much in this world upon which we set our hearts. It gives us a healthy distaste for anything except God and what leads to Him.
Jesus, it is not difficult to think of You and Your Mother on Calvary as I contemplate the heroic mother of the Machabees. If a son of mine is causing me anxiety, for whatsoever cause either because he is neglecting You and his Faith, or because he is away from me and in danger, or because he is facing death or disease or torture in prison - whatever be the reason of my anxiety, I turn to You, to Mary, to her prototype in the mother of the Machabees, and there I find encouragement. Mary, too, was a Mother, and every true mother suffers, and solves, in her own way, the mystery of suffering.