Oration 15: In Praise of the Maccabees.
-St. Gregory the Theologian.
What shall we say about the Maccabees? For this present assembly is in their honor. Although they are not honored by many, because their contest did not come after Christ, yet they are worthy to be honored by all, because they showed endurance for the sake of their ancestral laws. Having become martyrs before Christ’s sufferings, what would they not have done if they had been persecuted after Christ and had imitated His death for our sake? And without such a model, having displayed such great valor, would they not have appeared even more courageous if they had suffered while gazing upon Christ’s example?
But there is also a certain mystical and hidden teaching (very persuasive to me, at least, and to every God-loving soul): that none of those who attained perfection before Christ’s coming achieved it without faith in Christ. For the Word, although He was clearly revealed later, in His own appointed time, was nevertheless known even beforehand to pure minds, as is shown by many who were honored before Christ. Therefore, the Maccabees cannot be belittled because they suffered before the Cross. Rather, since they suffered in accordance with the Cross, they are worthy of praise and should be honored with words—not so that their own glory might increase (for what could words add to the glory of those whose deeds are already glorious?), but so that those who praise them may be glorified, and those who hear may emulate their valor, finding in their memory a spur to equal exploits.
Who the Maccabees were, where they came from, under whose initial guidance and instruction they reached such a height of valor and glory that they are honored with these annual processions and assemblies, and that a glory greater than the visible honors is preserved for them in the soul of every person—all this the book composed about the Maccabees will show to the curious and diligent. That book philosophizes on the theme that reason is sovereign over the passions and master of inclinations toward both directions—toward virtue and toward vice—and, as proof of this, among many other testimonies, it adduces the exploits of the Maccabees. But for me, it will suffice to say the following.
Here is Eleazar, the first to suffer before Christ (just as Stephen was the first to suffer after Christ)—a priest and an elder, gray in hair and gray in wisdom—who formerly offered sacrifices and prayers for the people, and now offers himself to God as a more perfect sacrifice, for the purification of the entire nation. A blessed beginning of the contest! At once a loud proclamation and a silent instruction! But he also brings forth seven youths—the fruit of his own teaching—a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1), a sacrifice more glorious and purer than any under the Law. For it is most just and fitting to attribute the sons’ valor to their father.
There are the sons—manly and great-souled, noble offspring of a noble mother, zealous contenders for the truth, worthy not of the times of Antiochus but of better ones, true disciples of the Mosaic Law, faithful guardians of ancestral customs. They form one of those numbers revered among the Jews—the number distinguished by the mystery of the seven-day rest. Breathing as one, aiming at one goal, knowing one path to life: to die for God! They are as much brothers in soul as in flesh. They vie with one another in desiring death (a wondrous spectacle!); like treasures, they snatch the torments from each other; they stand firm for their nurse—that is, the Law. They fear the torments prepared for them far less than they desire those yet unseen. They fear only one thing: that the tormentor might cease his tortures, that one of them might remain uncrowned, forcibly separated from his brothers, and become a poor victor by unfortunately escaping suffering.
There is the mother—courageous and manly, both tenderly loving her children and loving God. In her maternal heart she endures torments unnatural to endure. She does not pity her suffering sons but is tormented by the fear that they might not suffer; she grieves less for those who have departed than she desires that the survivors join them. She has greater concern for the latter than for those who have gone before, because the former still face an uncertain struggle, while death has made the others secure. She has already entrusted some to God; for the others she still anxiously prays that God will receive them. What a manly soul in a woman’s body! What wondrous and magnanimous zeal! Truly an Abrahamic sacrifice—and, if it is not bold to say, even greater than Abraham’s! Abraham willingly offers one son—true, his only-begotten, born according to the promise, the son for whom the promise was given and (more importantly) who was destined to be the beginning and root not only of a race but of similar sacrifices. But she consecrates to God an entire nation of sons; she surpasses both mothers and priests in the number of her offerings, ready for intelligent burnt offerings and spiritual sacrifices hastening to the altar.
She points to her breasts, reminds them of her nursing, appeals to her gray hair, uses her old age as intercession for her pleas—not to save her children from death, but to urge them toward suffering, for she considers delay in death a danger for them, not death itself. Nothing shakes her, nothing weakens her, nothing deprives her of joy: neither the prepared wooden racks, nor the wheels set up, nor the pulleys, nor the scaffolds, nor the sharpness of iron claws, nor the sharpened swords, nor the boiling cauldrons, nor the kindled fire, nor the fearsome tormentor, nor the gathering crowd, nor the encircling military guard, nor her fellow tribesmen standing by, nor the rending of limbs, nor the tearing of flesh, nor streams of flowing blood, nor the destruction of youth, nor the present horrors, nor the anticipated sufferings. And what is heaviest for others in such cases—the prolongation of the calamity—was for her the lightest. She delighted in the spectacle, however long the sufferings lasted—not only because of the variety of the tortures employed (all of which affected her less than a single one would have affected another), but also because the persecutor exhausted every kind of speech: now abusing, now threatening, now cajoling. For to what means did he not resort in order to achieve his desire?
But in my opinion, the responses of the youths to the tormentor display such wisdom and courage that, just as the valor of others taken together is insignificant compared to their endurance, so even their endurance itself is minor in comparison to their prudent words. It was characteristic of them alone to suffer in such a way and to respond to the tormentor’s threats with such philosophy—to all the things with which they were intimidated, things that utterly failed to overcome either the courageous sons or their even more courageous mother.
She, rising above all, combining spiritual strength with maternal love, offers herself as a beautiful funeral gift to her children and follows those who had departed before her. And in what manner? She voluntarily proceeds to suffering, not even allowing an impure body to touch her pure and manly flesh. And what funeral orations she pronounces! The sons’ responses to the tormentor were beautiful—indeed, the most beautiful of the beautiful. For are not those words beautiful with which they armed themselves and overthrew the tormentor? But the mother’s words were even more beautiful: first her exhortations, and then her funeral speeches.
So, what did the sons say? It is most timely now to refresh this in your memory, so that you may have from these events a model both of ascetic struggle and of martyric discourse. Each of the brothers said something of his own, as the persecutor’s word armed him, the order of suffering, and the zeal of his soul. But if all their words are brought together into one, they spoke as follows:
“Antiochus, and all you who stand here! We have one King—God, from whom we received our being and to whom we shall return. One Lawgiver—Moses, whom (we swear by the afflictions he endured for virtue and by his many wonders) we will not betray or bring into dishonor, even if another Antiochus threatens, one fiercer than you. For us, there is one safe refuge: to keep the commandments and not transgress the Law, by which we are fenced about as by truth. We have one glory: for the glory of our Law, to despise every glory. One wealth: the goods we hope for. And there is nothing fearful for us except one thing—to fear anything more than God.
“With such thoughts and such weapons we enter the battle; with such youths you have to deal. Though this world is desirable to us, and our native land, friends, relatives, peers, this great and glorious Temple, our ancestral feasts, mysteries, and all in which we place our superiority over other nations—yet none of these is more desirable than God and suffering for a good cause. No, do not think it! For there is another world for us, higher and more enduring than the visible one. Our fatherland is the heavenly Jerusalem, which no Antiochus will dare besiege or hope to capture—so strong and impregnable it is! Our kinship is divine inspiration and all those nobly born. Our friends are the prophets and patriarchs, who serve as models of piety for us. Our peers are all who now suffer and share our endurance. Our Temple is the magnificent heaven; our festival is the assembly of Angels. We have one great—even the greatest—mystery, hidden from many: God, who is the goal even of the mysteries here below.
“So, do not further deceive us with promises of trivial and worthless things. Dishonor will not bring us honor; harm will not enrich us; we will not consent to such a wretched bargain. Cease your threats—or rather, we ourselves will threaten you, to expose your impotence and show what punishments we have ready for you. For we too have fire with which we torment persecutors. Do you think you are contending with nations, cities, and the most effeminate kings—some of whom prevail, while others perhaps are defeated—because the peril for them is not of this kind? You rise up against God’s Law, against the well-inscribed tablets, against our ancestral decrees, which have weight both by their lofty significance and by their antiquity. You rise up against seven brothers who live as if with one soul and will disgrace you with seven trophies of victory. It is no great thing to conquer them; but a great shame to be defeated by them!
“We are the descendants and disciples of those whom a pillar of fire and cloud guided, for whom the sea parted, the river stood still, the sun halted, bread rained down, the raising of hands put thousands to flight, overthrowing them by prayer; before whom beasts were tamed, fire did not touch, whose courage kings admired and yielded to. We will say something even you yourself know well: we are disciples of Eleazar, whose courage you have tested. First the father completed his contest; now the children enter the struggle. The priest has departed; the sacrifices will follow him.
“You terrify us with much, but we are ready for even more. And what will you do to us with your threats, you arrogant one? What evil will you inflict on us? No one will surpass in strength those ready for every suffering. Why does the crowd delay? Why do they not begin the work? Why wait for a merciful command? Where are the swords? Where the chains? Let them kindle more fire, release the fiercest beasts, prepare the finest instruments of torture—so that everything is royal and costly!
“I am the firstborn; offer me first as sacrifice.
“I am the youngest of the brothers; better to reverse the order.
“No, let one of the middle ones become the first victim, so that we all are honored equally.
“But you spare us and wait, hoping we will change our minds.
“Again, and not once only, we repeat the same word to you: we will not taste the unclean, we will not give our consent. Sooner will you respect our decrees than we submit to yours. In short: either invent new torments, or be convinced that we despise those you have prepared for us.”
Thus the brothers spoke to the tormentor. And how they exhorted one another! What a spectacle they presented—truly beautiful and sacred! For God-loving souls, it is more pleasing than anything that can be seen or heard. Even I, at the mere recollection, am filled with delight; I behold the contestants before my mind’s eye and take pleasure in the narrative about them.
They embraced and kissed one another; for them, it was a festival, as if the contests were already completed. “Come, brothers,” they cried, “come, let us hasten to the torments while the tormentor still burns with wrath against us, lest we lose salvation if he softens. The banquet is prepared; let us not deprive ourselves of it. It is beautiful to see brothers who ‘dwell together’ (Ps. 132:1), rejoice together, and serve as shields for one another—but even more beautiful if they suffer together for virtue. If it were possible to fight for ancestral decrees with weapons in hand, even then death would be praiseworthy. But since circumstances do not demand this, let us offer our bodies as sacrifice. And why not sacrifice them? If we do not die now, shall we never die? Shall we never pay the debt to nature? Better to turn into a gift what we must yield by necessity: let us outwit death; let us make what is common to all our own possession and purchase life with the price of death.
“Let none of us be a lover of life or cowardly. Let the tormentor, stumbling over us, despair even of the others. Let him appoint the order himself—who suffers after whom. If someone concludes the series of the persecuted, it will make no difference in the fervor of our zeal. Let the first to suffer be a path for the others, and the last a seal of the contest. Let us all with equal firmness resolve in our hearts to win crowns for the whole house, so that the persecutor has no share in us and cannot, in his boiling rage, boast of victory over all by conquering one. Let us prove that we are brothers to one another not only by birth but even in death; let us all suffer as one, and let each of us suffer equally with all.
“Receive us, Eleazar; follow after us, mother. Bury magnificently your dead in Jerusalem—if only something remains for the tomb. Tell of us to succeeding generations, and to your worshippers show the sacred burial place of those born from one womb.”
Thus they spoke and acted, encouraging one another according to their age, like a boar sharpening one tusk against the other. All preserved the same zeal—to the pleasure and wonder of their fellow tribesmen, to the fear and terror of their enemies. And though the enemies had boldly arrayed themselves against the whole nation, they were so shamed by the unity of the seven brothers contending for piety that they lost even the pleasing hope of overcoming the rest.
And the courageous mother—truly worthy of such valiant sons—this great and lofty-spirited nursling of the Law, torn by two powerful motions of the heart, felt within herself a mixture of joy and fear: joy because of the courage of her sons and all that she beheld; fear because of the uncertainty of the future and the excess of their torments. Like a bird that sees a serpent crawling toward her chicks or some other predator plotting against them, she fluttered around them, beat her wings, entreated, and shared in her children’s sufferings. And what did she not say, what did she not do, to inspire them to victory! Now she snatched drops of blood, now lifted severed limbs, now reverently fell upon the remains; she gathered the members of one son while handing another over to the tormentors and preparing a third for the contest. To all she proclaimed: “Beautifully done, children! Beautifully done, my valiant contestants—almost incorporeal while yet in the flesh, defenders of the Law in my old age and of the holy city that nurtured you and raised you to such heights of valor! A little longer, and we have conquered! The tormentors are wearying—this alone I fear. A little longer, and I am the most blessed of mothers, and you the most blessed of youths! But are you grieved to part from your mother? I will not abandon you; I promise you this. I am no hater of my own children.”
When she saw that all had ended their lives and by their death had freed her from anxiety, then with bright eyes she lifted her head and, like an Olympic victor, raising her hands with bold spirit, loudly and solemnly declared: “I thank You, Holy Father! I thank You, our instructor—the Law! I thank you, our father and champion of your children, Eleazar! I thank You that the fruit of my pangs has been accepted, and I have become the most sacred of mothers! Nothing remains to me for the world; all has been given to God—all my treasure, all the hopes of my old age. What great honor is mine! How beautifully my old age is secured! Now I am rewarded for your upbringing, children—I have seen how you contended for virtue, been deemed worthy to behold all of you crowned; I even regard your tormentors as benefactors. I am ready to express gratitude to the persecutor for this arrangement, by which I was preserved for sufferings last, so that, after leading forth those I bore onto the stage and completing a martyric contest in each of them, I might depart hence in full security after offering all the sacrifices.
“And I will not tear my hair, rend my garments, lacerate my flesh with nails; I will not arouse weeping, summon mourners, shut myself in dark seclusion so that the very air might lament with me; I will not await comforters or offer the bread of sorrow. All this befits faint-hearted mothers who are mothers only in the flesh, whose children die leaving no good name behind them. But you, my dearest children, have not died but been offered as a gift to God; you are not forever parted from me but only transplanted for a time; you are not scattered but gathered together; no beast has devoured you, no wave swallowed you, no brigand destroyed you, no disease crushed you, no war consumed you, nor has any other calamity—greater or lesser—common to men befallen you. I would weep—yes, bitterly weep—if something like that had happened to you. Then I would prove my maternal love with tears, as I prove it now by shedding none. More than that: then I would truly mourn you—if you had saved yourselves to your own harm by escaping torment, if the tormentors had triumphed over you and prevailed over even one of you, as now the persecutors themselves are defeated by you. But what has occurred today is praise, joy, glory, exultation, and rejoicing for those who remain.
“Yet I too am offered as a sacrifice after you. And I shall be compared to Phinehas, glorified with Hannah—even more so, for Phinehas was zealous alone, while you appeared as numerous avengers of fornicators, striking down not carnal but spiritual fornication; and Hannah dedicated to God one son, given by God and newly born, whereas I consecrated seven grown men who offered themselves voluntarily. Let Jeremiah complete my funeral oration—not lamenting but praising the reverend end! You ‘were purer than snow, whiter than milk, and your assembly more beautiful than coral—born and offered to God’ (Lam. 4:7)! What more? Join me also to my children, tormentor, if mercy can be expected even from enemies. Join me too—such a contest would be more glorious for you. Oh, how I wish I might endure all the torments they endured, so that my blood might mingle with theirs and my aged flesh with theirs! For my children’s sake, I love even the instruments of their sufferings. But if this is not to be: at least let my dust be united with their dust, and one tomb receive us! Do not envy an end equally honorable to those equally honorable in valor.
“Farewell, mothers; farewell, children! And may mothers thus rear those they bear, and children thus be reared! We have given you a beautiful example of how to contend the good contest.”
Thus she spoke and joined herself to her sons. But how?—you will ask. As if ascending a bridal bed, she rushed upon the pyre to which she had been condemned. She did not wait for anyone to lead her up, nor allow an impure body to touch her pure and manly flesh.
Thus Eleazar enjoyed the priesthood; thus he himself was consecrated and consecrated others to the heavenly mysteries—not with outward sprinklings but with his own blood, sanctifying Israel and making the last day of his life a perfecting mystery! Thus the sons enjoyed their youth—not enslaving themselves to pleasure but mastering the passions, purifying the body and departing to the impassible life! Thus the mother enjoyed her numerous offspring, thus was adorned by her children in their lifetime and rested together with those who had departed! Those born for the world she presented to God; by the number of their contests she reckoned anew the pangs of their birth; and she recognized the children’s seniority from the order in which they died—for all contended, from first to last, and as wave follows wave, so they—one after another—displayed valor, each more eagerly than the last advancing to suffering, already strengthened by the example of those who had suffered before him. Therefore the tormentor was glad that she had not been mother to more children; otherwise he would have remained even more shamed and defeated. And only then did he first learn that not everything can be overcome by force, when he encountered unarmed youths who, armed only with piety, were ready with greater zeal to endure all things than he himself was prepared to inflict sufferings upon them.
Such a sacrifice was wiser and more majestic than Jephthah’s, for here neither the fervor of a vow nor the desire for an unexpected victory made the offering necessary, as there; on the contrary, it was entirely voluntary, and its reward was the hoped-for goods alone. Such a contest was in no way inferior to Daniel’s, who was given to the lions and conquered the beasts by raising his hands; it yields nothing to the courage of the youths in Assyria, whom an angel refreshed in the flames when they refused to transgress their ancestral law and touch unclean and unhallowed foods. And in zeal, it is no less than those sacrifices later offered for Christ. For those who suffered for Christ—as I said at the beginning of this discourse—had before their eyes Christ’s blood, and their leader in the contests was God Himself, who offered for us so great and wondrous a gift; whereas the Maccabees had before them neither many nor similar examples of valor.
All Judea marveled at their endurance; she rejoiced and triumphed as if she herself were then crowned, for she too had a contest at stake—even the greatest contest ever facing Jerusalem: either to see the ancestral Law trampled on that day or to be glorified. The fate of the entire Jewish people hung on the Maccabees’ contest and stood, as it were, on the edge of a sword. Even Antiochus was astonished; his threats turned to wonder, for enemies too can marvel at great deeds when anger passes and the deed justifies itself. Therefore he withdrew without success, repenting much; he praised his father Seleucus for his respect toward the Jewish people and generosity to the Temple, bitterly reproached Simon who had incited the war, acknowledging him as the cause of the inhumanity and disgrace.
Let us imitate the Maccabees—priests, mothers, and children alike. Let priests imitate Eleazar in honor of this spiritual father who displayed the most excellent example in both word and deed. Let mothers imitate the courageous mother, that they may prove truly child-loving and present their children to Christ, so that marriage itself may be sanctified by such an offering. Let children honor the holy youths and dedicate the time of youth not to shameful passions but to the struggle against passions, to manly warfare against our daily Antiochus, who wages war through all our members and persecutes us in manifold ways. For I desire that there be contestants for every time and circumstance, from every class and age—subject both to open assaults and hidden snares of the enemies. I desire that they draw on ancient guides but also on new ones, and like bees gather from everywhere what is most useful into one sweet honeycomb, so that God—who is glorified in the Son and in the Spirit, who knows His own and is known by them, who is confessed and confesses, glorified and glorifies—may be glorified in us through both the Old and New Testaments, in Christ Himself, to whom be glory forever. Amen.