As random as these notes may be, it still makes, as always, little sense to read the sequel without having read the first part. So if you haven‘t read it yet, go back to “Judith the Widow – Part I“ before continuing here.
V What can we learn from Judith?
As Judith exemplies many virtues, we could surely learn endlessly from her and her story. She is a perfect example of complete, well-rounded, brightly shining womanhood: fearing the Lord, humble, prayerful, noble-minded, wise, chaste, faithful, motherly, generous, merciful, empathetic – able to weep with the weeping and to rejoice with the joyful – self-sacrificing, and courageous, and all these excellent qualities of her could be shown by carefully re-reading the text. But in this fifth and final chapter of thinking about Judith, I would simply like to glean all we can glean from only one chapter, the rich and deep eighth chapter of the book of Judith.
“Now it came to pass, when Judith a widow had heard these words, who was the daughter of Merari, the son of Idox, the son of Joseph, the son of Ozias, the son of Elai, the son of Jamnor, the son of Gedeon, the son of Raphaim, the son of Achitob, the son of Melehias, the son of Enan, the son of Nathanias, the son of Salathiel, the son of Simeon, the son of Ruben: And her husband was Manasses, who died in the time of the barley harvest: For he was standing over them that bound sheaves in the field; and the heat came upon his head, and he died in Bethulia his own city, and was buried there with his fathers. And Judith his relict was a widow now three years and six months. And she made herself a private chamber in the upper part of her house, in which she abode shut up with her maids. And she wore haircloth upon her loins, and fasted all the days of her life, except the sabbaths, and new moons, and the feasts of the house of Israel. And she was exceedingly beautiful, and her husband left her great riches, and very many servants, and large possessions of herds of oxen, and flocks of sheep. And she was greatly renowned among all, because she feared the Lord very much, neither was there any one that spoke an ill word of her. When therefore she had heard that Ozias had promised that he would deliver up the city after the fifth day, she sent to the ancients Chabri and Charmi. And they came to her, and she said to them: What is this word, by which Ozias hath consented to give up the city to the Assyrians, if within five days there come no aid to us? And who are you that tempt the Lord? This is not a word that may draw down mercy, but rather that may stir up wrath, and enkindle indignation. You have set a time for the mercy of the Lord, and you have appointed him a day, according to your pleasure. But forasmuch as the Lord is patient, let us be penitent for this same thing, and with many tears let us beg his pardon: For God will not threaten like man, nor be inflamed to anger like the son of man. And therefore let us humble our souls before him, and continuing in an humble spirit, in his service: Let us ask the Lord with tears, that according to his will so he would shew his mercy to us: that as our heart is troubled by their pride, so also we may glorify in our humility. For we have not followed the sins of our fathers, who forsook their God, and worshipped strange gods. For which crime they were given up to their enemies, to the sword, and to pillage, and to confusion: but we know no other God but him. Let us humbly wait for his consolation, and the Lord our God will require our blood of the afflictions of our enemies, and he will humble all the nations that shall rise up against us, and bring them to disgrace. And now, brethren, as you are the ancients among the people of God, and their very soul resteth upon you: comfort their hearts by your speech, that they may be mindful how our fathers were tempted that they might be proved, whether they worshipped their God truly. They must remember how our father Abraham was tempted, and being proved by many tribulations, was made the friend of God. So Isaac, so Jacob, so Moses, and all that have pleased God, passed through many tribulations, remaining faithful. But they that did not receive the trials with the fear of the Lord, but uttered their impatience and the reproach of their murmuring against the Lord, were destroyed by the destroyer, and perished by serpents. As for us therefore let us not revenge ourselves for these things which we suffer. But esteeming these very punishments to be less than our sins deserve, let us believe that these scourges of the Lord, with which like servants we are chastised, have happened for our amendment, and not for our destruction.
Judith 8: 1-27
Let us first get the immediate setting of this scene straight: This is at the time of total warfare, and of total despair. At the time of Bethulia being besieged by the enemy, under vital threat. This is long – yes long, even if only hours – before the victory. This is Judith being the only one among her people who still sets all her hope on the Lord. Think of a situation in which God‘s people are hemmed in and pressed upon from each and every side and in which the leading men of the community have already deliberated that compromise, peace with the surrounding world, is the only way there is, the only way to survive…
Her fellow Israelites have made up their mind about the situation: What got us here, is that we were not willing to accept the rule and reign of Nebuchadnezzar and his general Holofornes. That was our foolish mistake. We held on to the old idea of our forefathers of being a free nation, subject to no one but the Lord. But the times have changed. It is a new day and age. And we should have acknowledged that Nebuchadnezzar is indeed lord of all the earth. We should have paid him our dues, and maybe he would have let us worship our God on the side in peace and quiet, as long as we do not question and challenge his dominion and authority. Can we not have both – peace with Nebuchadnezzar and peace with the Lord? Isn‘t this what the spirit of this new day and age is compelling us to seek?
But Judith offers them quite a different interpretation and quite a different solution: We are in a trial, we are put to the test: Do we worship the Lord in truth? Is our hope in Him, in Him alone? The times have not changed, they are ever the same, because our relationship with the Lord our God is ever the same – He is ever the same and we are called, in every day and age, to respond to Him faithfully in the ways that were handed down to us. Like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses and all our forefathers were tested in their faith and in their friendship with God through many tribulations, so are we. We have to prove our faithfulness, our steadfastness in Him, just like they did. We have to overcome this situation with faith, just like they overcame their troubles. To hold on to everything our forefathers told us and taught us and hold fast to it, was not a foolish mistake at all. It is instead our origin, our identity, and our destination, because we are the people the Lord has purchased for Himself from among all the nations. But we are about to make a very foolish mistake now by provoking the Lord our God to anger by our unfaithfulness. We are about to make that very mistake that our forefathers made at other times, reaping no fruit, but only disaster and disgrace from it: worshipping strange gods, subjecting ourselves to foreign lords, mixing our pure and holy faith received from above with the unholy ways of the surrounding nations. Who are we to set a time limit for the Lord? Who are we, his mere creatures, to tell him, the Creator of heaven and earth, when to act on our behalf? We must repent from such prideful despair and return to humble hope. And let us view all the trials and tribulations befalling us as “scourges of the Lord“ given for our benefit, as merciful chastisements from His hands. Let us, in humility, remember that “the wages of sin is death“ (Romans 6: 23) and that for all our many sins we do deserve a situation even worse than the one we are facing right now. Let us understand that this is really not a new day and age belonging to Nebuchadnezzar, but that this is still the day and age that belongs to the Lord of heaven and earth alone, and accept it is a time of penance laid upon us. We are called to do penance for the sins of our forefathers and ours, and in fact for the whole world, that has handed itself over to Nebuchadnezzar in fear, and we are called to hold fast to our holy faith in the Lord without wavering, even in times of great trouble, even in times of scourges that heap painful sufferings upon us. Let us rely on the Lord‘s promises to Israel. What is happening right now, is not happening for our destruction, but for our good, even if we cannot understand it. Therefore, let us humbly wait for the Lord‘s consolation. Let us wait on Him – and not act without and against Him.
It is Judith‘s purity of heart in following the Lord that allows her to see this spiritual, universal, cosmic dimension of the current situation – that allows her to see things spiritually, with eyes from above, not worldly, with eyes from below. This is her wisdom: that she is able to look through the false, shallow, distorted accounts of what was, what is, and is to be done. This is her wisdom: that she is able to see the truth clearly in times of chaos and confusion.
But such wisdom and clear sight is a gift from above – and the fruit of a long journey already travelled on the pathways of the Lord. We should not glimpse over the fact that for years Judith gets prepared for her role as the wise and brave heroine saving Israel. And we should not neglect all the little details of this time of her preparation:
After her genealogy is related to us, we are told that her husband Manasses died during the barley harvest, in the heat of summer, and was then buried in Bethulia. After her death, Judith the widow is buried right next to him, according to the book‘s final sixteenth chapter. At the time of Israel’s tribulation, three and half years have passed since her husband‘s death. For the past three and half years, Judith has lived in silence and obscurity. She could have married again, but the only husband she knew and ever wanted to know was the one she had lost.
“And she wore haircloth upon her loins, and fasted all the days of her life, except the sabbaths, and new moons, and the feasts of the house of Israel.“
Judith 8: 6
From that one line, we learn a lot about the way she lived her life during those years of her widowhood. She devoted herself completely to prayer and spent her days in a steady rhythm of fasting and feasting. Faithful and obedient to the Lord‘s commandments to celebrate the weekly feast day of Shabbat, the new moon festivals (the beginning of a new Hebrew month), and all the great feast days of Israel, like Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkoth, she celebrated them, certainly not alone, but with her people, breaking her continual fast on those days to give thanks and praise to the Lord. But all the other days of her life were days of fasting: of silence, of solitude, of denying herself the comfort of food, and of offering prayers and sacrifices in a penitential spirit. To wear haircloth on one‘s loins cannot be comfortable. It inflicts pain upon the body. Why is Judith doing that?
She must have loved her husband very much and she must have wept many tears for him at his burial. Her faithfulness to him reaches beyond the grave. Though the law permits her to remarry, she esteems the covenant of marriage so highly and loves her husband so strongly and exclusively, that she chooses to rather suffer always missing him and the reproach of widowhood alongside of it, than to numb her pain with a new husband and brighter days. Yes, out of love, she chooses, she embraces suffering. And this is the link to her continual practice of fasting and penance. She chooses to offer up her suffering, as the widow left behind, continually to God. For whom is she praying, for whom is she interceding in prayer, each and every day? Maybe for him, Manasses? That he may be loosed from his sins? That his soul may see the light, the kingdom of God? Maybe for him and all their dead ancestors? Maybe for the whole nation of Israel?
Interestingly enough, in Jewish tradition the story of Judith is connected with the times of the Maccabean revolt, which is recorded in the first and second book of Maccabees and to which the winter festival of the rededication of the temple, Chanukkah, is owed, and Judith is therefore often seen as a “Chanukkah heroine“, associated with the Maccabean heroes. In the second book of Maccabees, we read an interesting story telling us why in the Jewish and in the Catholic tradition, praying for the deceased is consired a “mitzvah“, as the Jews would call it, a good deed, yes, even a moral obligation of the living towards the dead – an act of charity, of the love that “many waters cannot quench“ (Song of Solomon 8: 7), not even the waters of death and Hades.
After one of the battles, which the Jews have to fight at that time, their leader Judas the Maccabee finds out about a hidden sin committed by some of his slain soldiers:
“(…) Judas came with his company, to take away the bodies of them that were slain, and to bury them with their kinsmen, in the sepulchres of their fathers. And they found under the coats of the slain some of the donaries of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbiddeth the Jews: so that all plainly saw, for this cause they were slain. Then they all blessed the just judgment of the Lord, who had discovered the things that were hidden. And so betaking themselves to prayers, they besought him, that the sin which had been committed might be forgotten. But the most valiant Judas exhorted the people to keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they saw before their eyes what had happened, because of the sins of those that were slain. And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection. (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead.) And because he considered that they who had fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.“
2 Maccabees 12: 39-46
This is one of the foundational scripture passages for the Catholic Church‘s doctrine on the communion of saints, on the solidarity of all members of the holy nation that reaches beyond the grave, beyond time and place, and on the common treasure storage of grace shared among all saints, and the efficacy of sacrifices and prayers offered on behalf of the souls in purgatory, the realm of purification from their sins on their journey to communion with God, and to resurrection and life everlasting.
To intercede for her husband, to intercede for all her deceased ancestors, to intercede for the whole holy nation and all its members – past, present, and future – was maybe Judith‘s very own act of piety in an ever widening circle of true and fierce love.
“Put me as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy as hard as hell, the lamps thereof are fire and flames.“
Song of Solomon 8: 6
When the time of tribulation befalls the nation of Israel, Judith has been trained for three and a half years in the spirit of penance, of intercession, of self-sacrificial suffering for love‘s sake, and has been infused with the wisdom and prudence that comes from above, that flows from continual communion with the Lord. That‘s why she is ready to see the challenge and calling of the given situation. And that‘s why she is ready to step in, to intercede on behalf of the whole nation in her risky venturing out into enemy‘s territory.
If we were to take life advice from Judith the chaste widow, a saint in training, as she is living in the shades of the house her husband has left to her before Israel‘s moment of victory comes in the shades of night, it might look something like this:
In the silence of your Husband‘s house, pray – pray for the living and the dead, day in, day out. On your days of fasting, fast onto the Lord. And on your days of feasting, feast onto the Lord. Keep the Sabbath day holy, and keep all the holy festivals of Israel holy. Be faithful and obedient in all the small things, day in, day out. Strive to love the Lord supremely – in life, in death, in joy, in tears place your hope in Him alone – and strive to love everyone entrusted to you justly. And never forget that you have entered into an everlasting covenant – never forget your Husband, seeking to be united with him forever and ever in the age to come.
Sounds like living a simple traditional Catholic life, day in, day out? Sounds like the hard dry road of long and at times mundane obedience, sounds like boiling and spooning your soul’s daily soup with and without taste? It kind of does… And on many days of water and on many days of weeping it probably is. But lest we forget, there are days of wine and of rejoicing, too. Saint Judith lived them both. And her supreme virtue through it all – Saint Jerome has already told us in the beginning – is chastity, one of the most misunderstood virtues: Her supreme virtue is loving with hope, with undiffused desire, with yearning – a love that is salty, that is good, sparkling and spicy like old wine, or like an ancient poem handed to us from our forefathers, who still knew what true romance looks, and sounds, and feels like…
“Begin ye to the Lord with timbrels, sing ye to the Lord with cymbals, tune unto him a new psalm, extol and call upon his name. The Lord putteth an end to wars, the Lord is his name. (…) O Adonai, Lord, great art thou, and glorious in thy power, and no one can overcome thee. Let all thy creatures serve thee: because thou hast spoken, and they were made: thou didst send forth thy spirit, and they were created, and there is no one that can resist thy voice. The mountains shall be moved from the foundations with the waters: the rocks shall melt as wax before thy face. But they that fear thee, shall be great with thee in all things.“
Judith 16: 1-19
“And chastity was joined to her virtue, so that she knew no man all the days of her life, after the death of Manasses her husband. And on festival days she came forth with great glory. And she abode in her husband’s house a hundred and five years, and made her handmaid free, and she died, and was buried with her husband in Bethulia.“
Judith 16: 26-28
In days of penance, Judith is becoming a saintly woman – long before the splendor of her noble, through suffering twice refined character is brought to light, long before all of Israel esteems and honors her due to her doing the impossible, the miracle of defeating the undefeatable enemy. For years she is a saint in total obscurity – the kind of obscurity in which many saints have lived and died.