Eating cultural pork

By Michael Incorvia

Maccabees from Wikimedia Commons.

Sometimes an event will linger with me throughout the day, into the next.  Yesterday, I had such an event.  It was the Old Testament reading at mass, 2 Maccabees.

The passage was about a prominent scribe, Eleazar, who Syrians agents were trying to force to eat pork.  The Syrians were occupying Israel, and decreed Israel abandon her Jewish culture and adapt the culture of the Greeks.  The agents presented Eleazar with face saving ways.  For example, Eleazar could provide the meat himself, so that it would only appear like he ate pork.  But Elearzar declined.  He realized that such an appearance would present scandal, particularly to the young.  The passage is included below for those who would like to read it in its entirety.

Each of us will be presented with situations to eat the pork of the culture.  Will we like Eleazar decline to partake of the cultural pork?  Will our actions present scandal, or not?


Read the passage at Michael's blog To Love and Truth.

How to stay relevant

By Caroline

In the Cloister Library by Alessandro Sani (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

rel·e·vant [ rélləvənt ]
1- connected: having some sensible or logical connection with something else such as a matter being discussed or investigated
2- having social significance: having some bearing on or importance for real-world issues, present-day events, or the current state of society


The older you get the easier it is to think you’re becoming, ‘not relevant.’
If you’re in ‘that bracket’ maybe, like me, you occasionally sense that a technology tsunami has dragged you out to sea and like trying to tread water in a rip current, you can’t get back to shore. It’s not that I don’t see the value of all the latest click enhancers, or use some of them;

but truth be told, I put up with them, learning only what I have to in order to function… Generally, I find they really cramp my style. I deleted my Facebook three months after I got an account..and for me, Twitter is a hot mess. Too many people thinking out loud, saying too many things that should probably be whispered and, well– taken out to sea in the tsunami and forgotten. I’d really just like to talk to somebody instead of texting all the time and for goodness sake, does anybody remember when a picture wasn’t virtual and stored on your smart phone, but actually something you kept in an album?

Yet, this is how the message travels today; with hash-tags, FB updates, blog posts and apps– that’s what I was recently telling the Lord in prayer;

I’m not relevant anymore. I don’t speak the language of the culture.
I feel young…but, I’m ‘old school.’
I’m washed up, Lord…and…I’m not going to Twitter.

Continue reading at Caroline's blog  Bell of the Wanderer.