Commentaria in II Machabaeorum
27. SO BENDING HERSELF TOWARDS HIM (her youngest son), MOCKING THE CRUEL TYRANT (note the more than manly spirit in a woman), SHE SAID IN HER OWN LANGUAGE (speaking in the Hebrew tongue, not the Greek in which Antiochus spoke, that she might more secretly and intimately pierce and strike the inmost heart of her son. So Josephus, or rather “in her own,” that is manly “voice.” So at verse 8, the second said in his own, that is a manly voice: “I will not do it.” See what is said at verse 21, as if to say: She spoke in a strong and noble voice, not like a woman and mother, but like a father and man:) MY SON, HAVE PITY UPON ME,—lest you alone by a base apostasy sadden and torment me your mother, but rather gladden me, anxious for you alone, by your constancy; for I shall be greatly afflicted if you, degenerate from your brothers, consent to the tyrant, and lose your soul, and bring on me and your brothers eternal disgrace. Hear St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 22 On the Maccabees: “I have become the most sacred of all mothers, I have left nothing for the world; I have handed over all to God; my treasure, my hopes, the nurses of my old age. How magnificently I am honoured! How excellently my old age has been cared for and handled! I have the rewards of your upbringing, O sons, since I have seen all of you contending for virtue, I have seen all victors: but to me, dearest sons, you are by no means dead and extinguished; but offered to God, nor torn, but joined and knit together; no beast has snatched you away, no wave overwhelmed you, no robber slain you, no enemy oppressed you, no force of war taken you away, nor in short any human accident.”
AND GAVE THEE SUCK THREE YEARS.—This many mothers did for three years, and Francis Valesius approves and praises it on medical grounds, Sacra philosophia, chapter 83. If any infant sucks his mother’s milk beyond three years, he is called by the common jibe Manotreptus, says St. Augustine on Psalm 30.
28. I BESEECH THEE, MY SON, LOOK UPON HEAVEN AND EARTH, AND UNDERSTAND THAT GOD MADE THEM OUT OF NOTHING.—And therefore consider that you also were created out of nothing by God, and fear, love, worship and obey him alone as Creator; and do not fear the tyrant, whom God likewise created and to whose raging he has set limits, so that he can inflict on you no more nor greater torments than God shall have permitted, who knows how much you can conveniently bear, and how abundant grace and strength he is to give you to endure them, that he may reward you as victor on earth and triumphant in heaven, and restore to you in the resurrection a body torn by the tyrant, whole and glorious. Hear St. Ambrose illustrating this: “Have pity on me, who carried thee in the womb through the course of so many months; do not in one moment bring confusion on my old age, do not discolour the trophies of so many of thy brothers, do not leave their sacred company, do not desert their fellowship. These triumphs still await thee. Look up to heaven, whence thou drewest thy breath, to the Father of all; look to the earth, which once furnished thee food; look to thy brothers, who seek their colleague; look to thy mother, who gave thee milk; repay the reward of pious blood, be not torn from thy brothers, be not torn from thy mother. Temporal are the riches that Antiochus promises, temporal the honours; everlasting is the crown which is offered by Almighty God. The Lord gave me seven lights of the days; I have already closed the sixth day, and all the works were very good. Thou owest it to me, my son, that what I laboured at in those six, I may rest in thee on the seventh, as one already keeping holiday from the works of the world.”
With like strength and ardour St. Symphorosa, hung up by her hair, urged on her sons to imitate her and to vie for martyrdom, as Usuard, Bede and others testify. “Come,” she said, “O my children, who are not so much my pledges as my very bowels! Look to the rock from which you were hewn. You had Getulius, a martyr of Christ, for your father; you have Symphorosa for your mother, hastening to martyrdom and rejoicing. Why do you hesitate to follow your parents, good sons, and to reckon what shall be inflicted on you for Christ not as torments but as caresses? I, a weak woman, suffer these tortures; suffer them also, you who are brave men. Nourished with my milk, refresh me with your blood. I held out the breasts; give back wounds. Repay a mother’s service with this kindness. No proof of your love for me is dearer to me. I shall live, if I perceive that you die for Christ. Your life will be most happy, if it is crowned with a most happy death for Christ.”
With equal fortitude the mother of St. Meliton, who was the youngest of the 40 Martyrs (whose feast the Church celebrates on the 9th of March), when the executioner wished to spare him while he still breathed, urged him on to martyrdom. “For when she saw,” says Nyssen, in the Oration on the 40 Martyrs, “the executioner’s kindness toward a brave man, she could not bear the insult; but she rebuked him for having separated the athlete from his fellow soldiers and colleagues.” And then, turning to her son: “Art thou not my son? Art thou not the offspring of my bearing? Since thou hast received God, thou art born according to God. Thou hast received power to become a son: run to thy Father; be not left behind by thy companions of the same age; do not come second to the crown; do not make void a mother’s vow. Thou wilt not offend thy mother if thou comest off victor, if triumphant.” And St. Basil, in the homily on the same 40 Martyrs: “For she was seen neither to shed an unbecoming tear, nor to say anything lowly, nor to do anything unworthy. But, ‘O my child,’ she said, ‘complete with thy comrades the blessed journey, lest thou be left out of the choir, or appear inferior to the others.’”
“O happy father,” she said, “O good shoot of a good root!” The noble parent showed how she had brought him up more by the institutions of piety than by milk. Wherefore she herself, taking Meliton on her shoulders, vigorously followed the wagons laden with the bodies of the martyrs, and in her embrace Meliton gave up his spirit to God, and the pious mother cast his body upon the same pyre of the other martyrs, that those who had been most closely joined in faith and virtue, linked also by fellowship in death, might fly up together to heaven.
Like these was the mother of St. Symphorian the martyr, who, as he was being led to execution, hearing his mother cry out: “Son, son, remember eternal life, look up to heaven and behold him who reigns there; for life is not taken from thee, but changed for the better,” bravely offered his neck to the executioner for the cause of Jesus Christ; the Church commemorates his triumph on the 22nd of August.
A rival of these has lately appeared in Japan, the heroine Thecla, who, like the Phoenix amid spices, so burned amid her sons: “We go, my sons,” she said, “to the pyre as to a kingdom. We shall walk among the coals as among jewels; we shall recline among the flames as among feathers; we shall rest amid the kindled piles as in a mother’s arms. The breath of our mouth is Christ the Lord. When our breath departs from us, Christ will enter in. He will rule our souls better than they themselves ruled our limbs. Take courage, my sons; for Christ, who is your life, gladly pour out your life. This pyre will be to you a womb, not a mother’s but a divine one, from which you shall come forth not into this life, which is like death, but into the true and eternal. Go on, my joy and my crown. Your torments cheer me, your fires crown me. Whatever milk you drew from me, you will abundantly repay me if you shed your blood for Christ; I call myself a noble Vine, which such noble branches encircle. Go on, my sons, to torment as to a trophy.”
30. AS THEY WERE YET SPEAKING, THE YOUNG MAN SAID: WHOM DO YOU STAY FOR?—that is, what sort of man do you expect me to be? One who will obey Antiochus? By no means; for I will obey God and my mother suggesting divine counsels, and you shall find me like my brothers, as hitherto you have found them. So “stay for” in verse 47 is taken for “expect.” Moreover, Gorionides says that the seventh said: “Why dost thou delay me, and not suffer me to go on together with my holy brothers? Thou wilt not persuade me to embrace thy vanities. I will not depart from the Lord and his holy and immaculate law, which he gave through Moses his servant to Israel his people, and to the sons of his servants. And thou, O Belial the worst, inventor of evils, Antiochus, injurious man, hater of truth, whom dost thou blaspheme and slander? Whither wilt thou go, and whither wilt thou flee from the face of our Lord, whose is the earth and the fulness of the world, and they that dwell therein? He will yet give us life, and exalt us, and magnify us above all, or above every nation.”
36. FOR MY BRETHREN, HAVING NOW SUFFERED A SHORT PAIN (bravely endured), ARE UNDER THE COVENANT OF EVERLASTING LIFE,—that is, they enjoy eternal life in limbo, awaiting the blessed vision of God in heaven after the death of Christ, which life was promised them by God through a testament, that is, the covenant and pact which he entered into with the Hebrews, and which he set down through Moses, Exodus xxiv, and throughout Deuteronomy. Hear St. Ambrose: “And so the young man, springing forward, said: Whom do you stay for? And crying out much, that he could by no means be torn from the fellowship of his brothers, whose funerals were far more blessed than the commands of the king, while he reproached the king with insults, and himself was tormented with bitter kinds of torture, he finished the course of this life.” Josephus, however, in chapter xii, relates these things otherwise; for he says: “Loose me,” he said (for this seventh son was bound in chains like a criminal), “that I may address the king and all his friends.” Those boys, exceedingly glad at this promise, at once loosed him. And he, when he had run to a certain frying pan near by, said: “O impious tyrant, most wicked of all the wicked, thou wert not afraid, having received from God both the other goods and the kingdom, to kill his servants and torture the worshippers of piety, for which things Right reserves thee for a denser and the same eternal fire, and for torments that no succession of ages will ever interrupt. Thou wert not afraid, beast of a man, to cut out the tongues of men of the same race as thyself and sprung from the same elements, and to torture them thus tormented. But they, dying bravely, have been perfected in their piety toward God; but thou, wretch, wilt weep, who hast slain the innocent champions of virtue. Therefore I, about to die, do not flee from the virtue of my brothers.” Having said this, he cast himself into the frying pans and so laid down his soul.” But this does not agree with what Holy Scripture adds, saying: