Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children! (Lamentations 2:19)
Christmas week is like a liturgical service: a dialogue between God and humanity. On Christmas Day, God gives the world his only-begotten Son. On the second day of Christmas, people kill St Stephen, the first martyr. On 27 December, the holy Apostle and Evangelist John proclaims that God Is Love. Today, Herod has the infant boys of Bethlehem killed. Through these contrasts, it becomes clear how greatly we need the grace of God revealed in Christ, which alone can overcome the power of evil.
The murder of the innocent children in Bethlehem is but one part of humanity’s sorrowful history—a fragment of the culture of death and the mentality of a world rebelling against God. Sadly, it is far from being only an ancient story. Historians estimate that several dozen children were killed in Bethlehem on Herod’s orders. We cannot say “only several dozen children”, because the death of every child is an irreparable tragedy.
There is not much to tell about the heroes of the Feast of the Holy Innocents. They did not accomplish anything particularly remarkable, because they were never given the opportunity. They were murdered before they could do anything or become anyone special. They are human beings sacrificed by others for supposedly greater aims, like eggs broken to make an omelette.
St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein (1891–1942), Carmelite martyr and co-patroness of Europe, reflected on the boys killed in Bethlehem: “Given up without defence, they are rather like lambs ‘led to the slaughter’ (Isaiah 53:7; Acts 8:32). Thus they are an image of utter poverty. They possess no good other than life itself. Now even that is taken from them, and they allow it to happen without the least resistance. They stand around the manger to show us what kind of myrrh we must bring to the divine Child: whoever desires to belong to him completely must surrender themselves to him in total renunciation and abandon themselves to the divine will as these children did.”
See you at church today at 10:00!
