CYRUS:
A CHERISHED MEMORY
The title of my thoughts for this 29th Sunday
in Ordinary Time [A] is: “Cyrus:
A Cherished Memory.”
When we studied the Old Testament in the Major Seminary - when we came to Cyrus
– probably when we came to today’s first reading from Isaiah 45 – Pete Ellis
described Cyrus as a good guy.
I still remember that sense of who Cyrus was – according
to Pete Ellis – when I first heard it in 1963.
Good stuff – a good cherished memory – stuck to his name
– once more when I heard it last night.
Cyrus - 590 to 530
– around then and around 60 years of life – is the guy who let the Jews back to
Jerusalem – out of their Babylonian Captivity days – in 538.
Babylon – Nebuchadnezzar – is the country and the general
and king – who attacked and destroyed Jerusalem in 570 or so.
He was a bad memory – along with all Babylonians and as
the psalmist – in Psalm 137 - put it –
bang their babies heads against the rocks.
Cyrus was a cherished memory.
So that’s the title of my thoughts: “Cyrus: A Cherished
Memory.”
When we hear the Redemptorist Cherished Memories read out at evening prayer down through the years I’m sure two things happened: we hoped we will make it and we wonder what
they will say about us.
We hope we will be cherished – at least by the people we
lived with and by the people we served.
Cyrus did a lot of conquering – and one of his policies was
to try to let a place keep its gods and its culture.
Isaiah calls him the anointed one of Yahweh.
Well historians said he did that for the various places he
conquered.
He did for Babylon what he did for Israel.
The statue of one of the gods of the Babylonians was Marduk. Cyrus took him by the hand and said, “You’re
still it”
He did this in various places.
Isaiah says that Yahweh took Cyrus by the hand and helped
him bop off Babylon. That one wasn’t too
difficult – because Nabonidus was very unpopular. When Cyrus army attacked the Babylonians –
their soldiers took off and ran the other way.
Since the Israelites had no statues, Cyrus had their sacred
vessels restored. They had been looted back in 587.
Last night when reading up on this stuff, I noticed the
following:
Two centuries later Alexander the Great [356 – 323 B.C.]
came to the grave of Cyrus.
It was a small stone building. It had a plaque that said: “I am Cyrus,
the son of Cambyses. I founded the
empire of the Persians and was king of Asia.
Grudge me not this memorial.”
When I read that, I got the thought, “A cherished memory is
our greatest memorial.”
May that be our legacy – to be cherished - not in stone –
but in the memory of those who knew us – that we were good and decent to each
other.
