On Saturday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time our Church invites us to first read and reflect on a passage from the beginning of the book of Maccabees (9:1-22) entitled "The death of Judas in battle". Our treasure, which follows, is from a treatise on death as a by Saint Ambrose, bishop. Saint Ambrose was born of a Roman family at Trier about the year 340. He studied at Rome and served in the imperial government at Sirmium. In 374, while, living in Milan, he was elected bishop of the city by popular acclaim and ordained on December 7. He devotedly carried out his duties and especially distinguished himself by his service to the poor, and as an effective pastor and teacher of the faithful. He strenuously guarded the laws of the church and defended orthodox teaching by writings and actions against the Arians. He died on Holy Saturday, April 4, 397. Saint Ambrose is a Doctor of the Church. Saint Ambrose wrote about death as a blessing in his works like De bono mortis (On the Goodness of Death) and De Excessu (On the Death of Satyrus).   Death as a blessing A "passover" to immortality: Ambrose frames death as a "passover" from a state of corruption and mortality to one of immortality and a calm, spiritual state. A remedy for a life of sorrow: He sees death as a necessary limit and remedy to the toil and sorrow that are the result of human sin. A victory over the flesh: He teaches that death is a victory of the spiritual over the carnal, allowing the soul to be free from the struggles of the fallen body and its desires.   The spiritual interpretation of death Spiritual death in life: Ambrose emphasizes a "death" that must be active within us in this life to make way for true life. This is a spiritual "death" or mortification of the body's sinful desires to be free from the world. "Bearing the death of Jesus": This spiritual mortification is understood as "bearing the death of Jesus in our bodies," which, through Christ, allows for the "life of the Lord Jesus" to be active in us. A daily familiarity with death: For this reason, he suggests that one should have a daily familiarity with and desire for death, so that the soul can be detached from the desires of the body and prepared for its final passage.  The name Maccabee, probably meaning "hammer," is actually applied in the Books of Maccabees to only one man, Judas, third son of the priest Mattathias and first leader of the revolt against the Seleucid kings who persecuted the Jews. Traditionally the name has come to be extended to the brothers of Judas, his supporters, and even to other Jewish heroes of the period, such as the seven brothers. The two Books of Maccabees contain independent accounts of events (in part identical) that accompanied the attempted suppression of Judaism in Palestine in the second century B.C. The vigorous reaction to this attempt established for a time the religious and political independence of the Jews. First Maccabees was written about 100 B.C., in Hebrew, but the original has not come down to us. Instead, we have an early, pre-Christian, Greek translation full of Hebrew idioms. The author, probably a Palestinian Jew, is unknown. He was familiar with the traditions and sacred books of his people and had access to much reliable information on their recent history (from 175 to 134 B.C.). He may well have played some part in it himself in his youth. His purpose in writing is to record the deliverance of Israel that God worked through the family of Mattathias—especially through his three sons, Judas, Jonathan, and Simon, and his grandson, John Hyrcanus. The writer compares their virtues and their exploits with those of Israel's ancient heroes, the Judges, Samuel, and Davi

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