2 Maccabees 1:20–23

After years of exile, Nehemiah sends priests to recover the sacred fire hidden before the Babylonian captivity, only to find a thick, mysterious liquid in its place. When this liquid is sprinkled on the altar wood and the sun breaks through the clouds, a great fire blazes forth miraculously, consuming the sacrifice. The assembled people then join in communal prayer, with Jonathan leading and the congregation responding — an act of liturgical worship that seals the miraculous event.

Verse 20 — The Search and the Discovery of "Thick Liquid" The narrative opens with a carefully structured sense of divine timing: "when it pleased God." This phrase is not incidental. The author of 2 Maccabees, writing within a deuteronomistic theological framework, consistently presents the events of Israel's history as governed by God's sovereign will. Nehemiah acts here not on his own initiative but under a "charge from the king of Persia," yet the true authority directing events is divine. He dispatches the descendants of the priests who originally concealed the fire — a detail that underscores the continuity of priestly vocation across generations. The descendants are stewards of a sacred inheritance they did not personally witness. What they find is not fire but a "thick liquid" (Greek: pachý hudōr, sometimes translated "naphtha" or "thick water") — a substance that looks nothing like what was sought. This moment of apparent failure is integral to the narrative's theological point: the sacred does not always present itself in the form we expect.

Verse 21 — The Sprinkling of the Liquid Nehemiah's response to the strange discovery is characteristically priestly and practical: he commands that the liquid be drawn out and brought to him, and then orders it sprinkled on both the wood and the offerings laid upon the altar. This sprinkling act resonates deeply with Old Testament purification rites (cf. Numbers 19) and anticipates the aspersion rituals of later Jewish and Christian liturgy. There is a bold trust embedded in Nehemiah's command — he proceeds with the sacrificial rite using a substance that, by all human reckoning, should not work. The action embodies the logic of faith: offering what one has, however unlikely it may appear, and leaving the result to God.

Verse 22 — The Miraculous Kindling The climax of the passage is extraordinary: after some time passes, the previously cloud-covered sun breaks through, its rays strike the altar, and a "great blaze" erupts to the astonishment of all present. The narrative is deliberate in emphasizing the sun's role — the clouds that had hidden it part, as though creation itself is coordinated with the moment of sacrifice. The liquid, inert and un-fire-like in itself, becomes the medium of divine action. This is not spontaneous combustion explained away as naphtha's chemical properties; the author frames the event unambiguously as miraculous, using the response of universal wonder ("all men marveled") as the narrative signal of divine intervention. The pattern follows the great fire-from-heaven traditions of Israel: Elijah at Carmel (1 Kings 18), Solomon's dedication of the Temple (2 Chronicles 7:1), and Moses' altar fire (Leviticus 9:24). In each case, the divine acceptance of sacrifice is ratified by fire.

Catholic tradition brings a distinctive richness to this passage on several fronts. First, the theology of sacred continuity: the descendants of the priests who hid the fire are entrusted with recovering it. This mirrors the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession — the ordained ministry is not merely an administrative function but a living transmission of sacred custody across time, even through exile and darkness (cf. CCC 1536–1537).

Second, the miraculous kindling of fire from an unlikely liquid speaks directly to sacramental theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae (III, q. 60), teaches that sacraments are outward signs that effect what they signify precisely because God acts through material means. The thick liquid is, in this typological reading, a proto-sacramental sign: inert matter that becomes the vehicle of divine fire. Origen, commenting on Leviticus, already drew the connection between the altar fire and the fire of the Holy Spirit given in Baptism and Confirmation (Homilies on Leviticus, 9.9).

Third, the communal, antiphonal prayer of verse 23 anticipates what the Catechism calls the "full and active participation" of the faithful in the liturgy (CCC 1141), a principle solemnly ratified by the Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium (§14). The people do not merely observe the sacrifice; they pray together, led and responding. This passage thus offers a biblical grounding for the participatory, dialogical nature of Catholic worship.

Finally, St. Ambrose (De Spiritu Sancto, I.13) saw the sacred fire in Israel's Temple as a type of the Holy Spirit — ever the same fire, yet dwelling in different vessels across the ages. The re-ignition of the flame under Nehemiah, after the long night of exile, becomes an image of Pentecost: the Spirit re-given to a renewed community gathered for worship.

Contemporary Catholics live in what many experience as an "exile" of secularism — a cultural moment in which the sacred fire of faith seems, to the outside eye, to have gone dark or been reduced to something unrecognizable and apparently inert. This passage offers a striking counter-narrative. The fire of God is not extinguished; it is often merely hidden, waiting for the moment of divine appointment ("when it pleased God") to blaze forth again.

Practically, this passage challenges Catholics to take seriously the priestly vocation of stewardship: we are, like the descendants of those priests, caretakers of a sacred inheritance we may not fully comprehend. The Eucharist, the Sacraments, Scripture, and the living Tradition of the Church are the "hidden fire" committed to our hands. Our task is not to manufacture renewal on our own terms but to tend what has been handed on (traditum) faithfully, sprinkle it on the altar of ordinary life, and trust that when God's moment comes, the blaze will astonish even us. Parishes undergoing renewal, individuals emerging from periods of spiritual dryness, and missionaries working in resistant cultures all find in Nehemiah's quiet, obedient act of sprinkling a model for faithful, patient action in the face of apparent inertness.