prayer for the dead – Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe

Reading through the second book of the Maccabees

Find my summary of the first book of the Maccabees here. The second book of the Machabees is more properly a book of the Machabees – the followers of Judas Machabeus (‘the hammer’), the son of the priest Mattathias of Modin. The first book had rushed past Judas in a way, after marking his fall in battle,Continue reading “Reading through the second book of the Maccabees”

Tobias and the angel

Yesterday was All Souls day, and as I was walking through the cemeteries, I thought often about why our race buries their dead, and why particularly those of Jewish and Catholic communities use such elaborate ceremonial for funeral and burial/cremation. And I remembered Tobias (Hebrew, Tobi-yah), a short story in our Old Testaments that isContinue reading “Tobias and the angel”