Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs

Lectionary: 698​

Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,

and stay there until I tell you.

Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him."

Since the early 1970's it has been easy to associate this dark feast with abortion in the United States and around the world. There are many shrines and memorials in Catholic institutions throughout the country dedicated to the innocents. We must protest this horror at every turn; it is a fatal cancer upon many nations.

But the murder of children has metastasized and in the past few years we have watched in horror as children and their teachers were slain in elementary schools and high schools. They are humans sacrificed for the fictitious "second amendment rights" of white men. These young scholars too are "holy innocents," along with those murdered in shopping malls, cinemas and concerts. 

Christmas and the Birth of Jesus are often regarded as mythological events in a mystical world that never actually existed. The story might begin with "Once upon a time" or "In a galaxy far, far away." The coming of the Word made Flesh could be dismissed as pleasant pap for children but there is nothing mythologically pleasing about Matthew 2:16-18. The story is at once a horror too familiar and too unspeakable. Children should not have to learn of it; adults should not have to talk about it.

Where Saint Luke reassures us with a pastoral scene of shepherds watching their flocks by night, Saint Matthew shocks us with a brutal reminder of the desperate, savage cruelty of our world. This is no place for children. In this world some people do unspeakably cruel actions for no other reason than they can. King Herod knew nothing of these children, their mothers, fathers or families; nor did he care. But, like that of children who die by abortion and the toddlers in kindergarten, their blood cried to heaven for revenge.

However, because we believe in the word of God, the Church invests the story of Holy Innocents with the promise that justice and mercy will embrace.​ Though they are too young to understand much of anything, we place on their small heads the crown of martyrdom. They are frolicking lambs protected and closely watched by our Good Shepherd. No harm can touch them; no threat come near them.

King Herod will die but his evil will persist; in God's time it will track down and destroy the Lamb of God. From all eternity the Father has known our world is no safe place for the Innocent. And yet he sent us his son. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Today, as we see racism in the United States oppressing minorities within our borders and opposing refugees near our borders, we recognize Herod's legacy. He is that rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem​. He cannot be stopped by war or peace, by education or enlightenment, by prosperity or austerity; only Christians willing to pay the full price as Jesus paid, can stop him.