Friday, July 23, 2004
Fast Day
The Holy Prophet Ezekiel
Kellia: 1 Maccabees 1:54-64 Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:8-23 Gospel: St. Matthew 17:10-18
1 Maccabees 1:54-64, especially vs. 64: "And very great wrath came upon Israel."
In considering Israel's experience under the Seleucids, a Christian reader ought to reflect soberly on certain social policies
now being promoted in Western culture that oppose the revealed truth of God. There is a history lesson in the abrupt
cultural shift which God's People met after the first hundred years following Greek conquest. While daily life for the Jews
mostly was benign, very much like the daily life the Faithful enjoy today in the world, government programs suddenly
shifted to a systematic repression of God's truth.
Following Alexander's conquest, Palestine was ruled from Egypt, under a dynasty of kings descended from Ptolemy, one of
Alexander's generals. The era was marked by prosperity and tolerance. Many Jews even adopted Greek as their first
language. It was Jewish scholars in Egypt who, during this time, translated the Old Testament Scriptures into Greek, the
version known today as the Septuagint (LXX), which served as the Bible of the Apostolic Church and remains to this day
as the Old Testament of the Orthodox Church.
In Palestine the High Priest quietly served God's People under the crown in Egypt, even collecting taxes within the Jewish
community. However, after Antiochus IV's war against Egypt (1 Mac. 1:16-20), Palestine passed into his control, and
conditions became oppressive for any of the Faithful who held firmly to the traditions handed down from Moses and the
Prophets. The present reading reveals how thoroughly the Seleucid regime set about systematically to eliminate Judaism.
While the form of the contemporary cultural war in North America is not marked by the same sort of naked state violence
used by the Seleucids, one discerns certain parallels in the flagrant secularist attacks on the beliefs and practices of
Orthodox Christians.
First, there was disdain for what the Faithful respected as holy - places, vessels, activities, persons, and seasons - so much
that made up the warp and woof of devout life. The Seleucids blatantly "erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of
burnt offering" (1 Mac. 1:54) and introduced the cult of Olympian Zeus into the Temple itself. An altar to Zeus, together
with his image, was set up above the altar of sacrifice, and, then, swine's flesh was offered there. Anyone slightly familiar
with the Mosaic Law will immediately perceive the horror for the devout Jews. Yet, a similar disdain for the holy is
widespread today, which one finds in the media, in judicial rulings against religious expression, or in the forbidding of
public displays of religious images.
The officials of Antiochus suppressed religious education of the young, for "the books of the law which they found they
tore to pieces and burned with fire" (vs. 56). Today the policies and curricula used in public education, to which the
children of Orthodox families are subjected, inculcate values and assumptions wholly contrary to the truth which the
Church has received and seeks to pass on generation by generation. There is an open prejudice against the miraculous, the
experience of God acting in human life, and an openness to His Self-revelation; for such verities cannot be measured
tangibly nor proven by the exclusive tenets of the scientific method.
Finally, the Seleucids vigorously promoted self-indulgence. "But many in Israel stood firm and were resolved in their hearts
not to eat unclean food." Rather, "they chose to die...than to be defiled by food or to profane the holy covenant...." (vss.
62,63). Today, the media assume self-indulgence as the correct life-style, effectively inviting the Faithful to violate the
Fasts, abandon prayer and ascetic discipline, and ignore chastity and traditional marriage.
O Lord, our God, assist us in serving Thee in true holiness and faithfulness throughout this present life, so that we fail not
finally to attain Thy heavenly kingdom and the age to come.
