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2 Maccabees 6:21 "Those who were in charge of that unlawful sacrifice took the man aside, because of their long acquaintance with him, and privately urged him to bring meat of his own providing, proper for him to use, and pretend that he was eating the flesh of the sacrificial meal which had been commanded by the king". This is the story of Eleazar, a Jewish scribe who was being forced to eat pork sacrificed in the temple which the Greek king had renamed "the temple of the Olympian Zeus" and in which all kinds of abominations were taking place. "Harsh and utterly grievous was the onslaught of evil. For the temple was filled with debauchery and reveling by the Gentiles, who dallied with harlots and ... brought in things for sacrifice that were unfit." (2 Maccabees 6:3-4)

 

Eleazar refused the proposed trickery in which he would have appeared to have eaten the unlawful sacrifice while instead eating his own meat. He cited the concern that this pretense would lead to the young thinking that he had "gone over to an alien religion". Instead, he willingly submitted himself to the rack where he was beaten to death, "leaving in his death an example of nobility and a memorial of courage, not only to the young but to the great body of his nation." (2 Maccabees 6:24-31).

 

I recently listened to a non-religious podcast titled "You Need to Love the Truth". The speaker was Dr. James Lindsay, who is tremendously concerned about the creeping communist/Marxist/evil takeover of our nation and the world that we are living through right now. James was espousing a love of truth and willingness to defend it as a necessity for fighting off this evil. He is absolutely right, as far as he goes, but as I listened I thought this is something that we Christians already know - we, like Eleazar, have to love the truth and be fully devoted to its preservation, even at the cost of our own lives, because the truth is a person - the truth is God. Loving truth is loving God, even the smallest deception is a betrayal of him. Eleazar knew this and gave his up his life for the truth. Hopefully it will not come to that for us, but it may, and we have to be ready to do the same.

 

Ever since the opening ceremony of the Olympics, I have been thinking of Maccabees and the Hellenistic influence that Judas Maccabeus and his men resisted and ultimately defeated, after much loss of life, including Judas'. I think I got this passage today to try to flush out those thoughts a bit more. I think this is one area where we are being asked to stand up for truth in a way that will cost us a lot less than our lives, just a change in our attention.

 

Early in Maccabees, well before the Hellenistic influence and domination was as bad as it was in Eleazar's time, it is lamented that the Jews, led by lawless brethren, "built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil." (1 Maccabees 1:14-15). The Jews let their guard down. A lot of what the Greeks were doing seemed entertaining, healthy, and otherwise good, and small deviations from God's law, like hiding one's circumcision in the body-centric gymnasiums, did not seem like a big deal. Fast forward to 2 Maccabees 5 and 6 and we see, among other horrors, Antiochus' general Apollonius holding a parade on the Sabbath to lure out the Jews, and then slaughtering any who came out to see the event (2 Maccabees 5:25-26); we see an Athenian senator being sent to Jerusalem "to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their fathers" (2 Maccabees 6:1); we see the corruption and renaming of the temple in honor of "Olympian Zeus" (2 Maccabees 6:2); and we see that "when the feast of Dionysus came, [the Jews] were compelled to walk in the procession in honor of Dionysus, wearing wreaths of ivy." (2 Maccabees 6:7). 

 

The original Olympic games were a sacred event, held in honor of Zeus, that brought the nation-states of Greece together to promote unity and worship of their gods. The modern Olympic games, (the ones that began in Athens in 1896), seem fun, entertaining, and a way to celebrate athletics while promoting international unity. However, despite how ancient the original games were (they began around 776 BC and ended around 393 AD), many hints of their pagan roots carry over to our modern games, and those influences seem lately to be growing.

 

The most controversial part of this year's opening ceremony was what the Olympic organizers are telling us was meant to portray a feast of the gods lauding Dionysus, the very god that Jews were forced to march through the streets in celebration of in Maccabees. Dionysius was the god of wine, fertility, festivity, and religious ecstasy, among other things. The feast that was staged at the Olympics was clearly set up to look like Da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper, albeit with the excess Dionysius would have promoted, including being populated by people in drag, and laden with much sexual innuendo.

 

The Olympic Last Supper tableaux has been defended by its creators as being meant to celebrate the origins of the Olympics and the inclusiveness they represent ("The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus. ... I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles" said Thomas Jolly, the event planner). Taking them at their word, I see this as one of the ways God is showing us where we Catholics (and Christians) may be going wrong in the world, as I talked about just a few days ago in When God Shows Us We're Wrong. In Maccabees, the Jews were forced to march for Dionysius and to celebrate Zeus in God's temple. In the modern Olympics, though, we are doing it ourselves, much like how the Jews built and used a gymnasium in Jerusalem. The staging of the Last Supper as a feast of the Greek god of wine and partying, it seems to me, is a late stage manifestation of the "foreign god"  influence we have allowed into our lives. It is a lot like the renaming of the temple in Zeus's name. The Last Supper is where the Mass was instituted, yet here we see it as a celebration of a Greek god. Maybe Christians are meant to look at the opening ceremony and realize that paganism has made a comeback in much of the world, and we are not to willingly participate in its ritualism. Maybe the opening ceremony was a wake-up call from God that we've gone a bit too far into false worship, like that of athletics, bodies, self, tolerance, and unity at the cost of truth, and we need to turn our attention back to God. As I wrote before, the unity God wants is unity in Him. A joining of the world's nations in some kind of enforced global unity would actually be antithetical to the Kingdom of God and the reign of Jesus as king. It would be more akin to the kingdom of the Antichrist.

 

To my mind, this doesn't mean we have to boycott or protest against the Olympic games. We can let games go on without paying too much attention to them. We can look at them like the ceremony of any other religion which we do not practice. It's not terrible for us to appreciate the sports and the athletes, but maybe we should not celebrate the whole thing the way the rest of the world does. I think, though, the level of resistance and protest comes down to personal discernment. 

 

To be honest, I am still watching certain events, like the women's gymnastics. But as I watched with my daughter a few nights ago, she said she could never be a gymnast because she would hate walking around with so much of her butt exposed! It made me think - why are they women's gym uniforms designed that way? They cover their arms, but expose a lot of their derriers! The men don't do this, and it does not seem to constrain them. Why are we exposing so much of women's bodies? Then I also read that men who identify as women are being allowed into the women's boxing competition. One of them forced a female boxer out of the ring in 46 seconds, and she collapsed in tears of pain and frustration at the loss of her life's work and training to a man who should never have been allowed in the competition. This is true evil being promoted as tolerance, inclusivity, and goodness. While the Olympic organizers say they are promoting "women's rights," ("Organisers worked with the International Olympic Committee on the topics they wanted to reflect in the show - including promoting LGBTQ+ and women's rights"), they are actually demeaning women and allowing men to beat them up!

 

We have to love the truth, and defend it. The Olympics may be a more minor place where the truth is being subverted, but I think this year's events in Paris might be a tipping point, a moment in which God is showing us that we have to wake up. Christians are different from the rest of the world, Catholics even more so!  As the world slips back into paganism, we cannot go with it. We cannot and should not celebrate pagan rituals, or tolerate affronts to truth, even in the name of tolerance and unity. We certainly should not willingly support or participate in the portrayal of one of our faith's most sacred events as the ritual of a pagan god. We are not yet being compelled to walk in the processions of pagan gods, as the Jews eventually were. Let's not be lured out to watch their parades, as the Jews were when Apollonius came to town, leading to their death.