Monday, November 23, 2015

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle B - November 20, 2015

Friday of the 33rd Week in Ordinary Time
November 20, 2015       8:30AM

 

There was a time before the birth of Christ when the Macedonian or Greek Empire controlled Israel.
The Greeks tried to impose their own culture and even their religion on the Jewish people.
They actually converted the temple in Jerusalem into a temple for their own religion.
Understandably, this was a great insult to the Jewish people and eventually they staged a revolt and regained control of their temple.
They rededicated it on December 14 of the year 164.
All of this is the context for today’s first reading.

Now the Hebrew word for rededication is Channukah.
The Talmud tells a story that a 1-day supply of oil miraculously burned for 8 days at the time of the rededication of the temple.
So, to remember the rededication of the temple, the Jewish people created the feast of Channukah and made it an 8-day celebration.
It is the feast of candles and lights and this year begins on December 7.
It happens, of course, at the same time that we Christians are beginning to celebrate Christmas and we do that with candles and lights too.
We are celebrating the birth of Christ, the light of the world, “God from God and light from light,” as our Profession of Faith says.

So, from both the Jewish and our Christian traditions, the lesson I suggest this morning is to lift up the light.
Lift up the light of kindness and community, the light of social justice and charity, and the light of reconciliation and peace wherever we see it.
That is the way to spread light in our world, which sometimes seems so dark.

In fact, this may be the only long-term effective way to diminish darkness and allow light to shine more and more fully.