The Holy Innocents (December 28th)

Of the quite many Saints and Feast Days to choose from this week: 

Dec. 23 - Saint John of Kanty, Priest

Dec.  25 - THE NATIVITY OF THE LORD

Dec. 26 - Saint Stephen, The First Martyr

Dec. 27 - Saint John, Apostle and Evangelist

Dec. 28 - The Holy Innocents, Martyrs

Dec. 29 - St. Thomas Becket, Bishop and Martyr

Dec. 29 - THE HOLY FAMILY OF JESUS, MARY AND JOSEPH 

I decided to write about the Holy Innocents.

The day commemorates an incident in the Gospel of Matthew (2:16-18):

When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "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."

Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, Out of Egypt I called my son.

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity

two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:

A voice was heard in Ramah,

sobbing and loud lamentation;

Rachel weeping for her children,

and she would not be consoled,

since they were no more.

Did it “really happen”?

Well, the incident refers to the Magi, traditionally remembered as The Three Kings, who visited the infant Jesus and his family, traditionally on Epiphany (January 6th or the First Sunday after the New Year).   Did they really exist?

Then was Jesus really born on Dec. 25th, a few days after the longest night of the year, in fact the first night after the longest night of the year, when it is said that one could discern the nights getting shorter (and hence the days getting longer).

There’s a lot of theology (reflection on God), or specifically Christology (reflection on who Christ (Jesus) would be), present in all these accounts:

If as is proclaimed in the First Reading of the Mass at Night on Feast of the Nativity of the Lord (Dec 25th), “A people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Is 9:1) and Jesus is remembered in our Faith as being “the Light of the World,” (Jn 8:12) then it makes a certain poetic / symbolic sense that Jesus would have been born on the of the year when the nights are longest, when just start to shorten.

Then if Jesus came as Savior to the whole world, then it would seem fitting that “three wisemen” (back then they would have been astrologers or otherwise alchemists or magicians) representing the different parts of the world, would somehow have figured it out and come to pay homage to the “new born king.”

And yes, King Herod, who was the historical (though largely puppet) ruler over the region at the time, could very well have been jealous, even murderously jealous, of the birth of Jesus once he would have found out that such a potential rival to his position could have been born.  There are plenty of despots, large and small who have existed in the past and exist today who have been easily as vicious as King Herod is presented in the story.

Whether one believes that these narratives surrounding Jesus’ birth are true, or could be true, could be largely true, or true enough, really depends on one’s faith in the truth of the fundamental message of the Christian message that: 

"In the days of Caesar Augustus ... when Quirinius was governor of Syria, a decree went out, that the wold world should be enrolled..." (cf. Luke 2:1-2),

hence why the Holy Family (Mary and Joseph) had to travel from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem (the city of David, of which by tradition St. Joseph was a member, descendant) 

or even more fundamentally:

“In the beginning was the Word,

   and the Word was with God,

   and the Word was God...

...

And the Word was made flesh,

   and dwelt among us.” (John 1:1, 14).

Indeed, Luke’s Gospel presents the birth of Jesus entering into the world in the context of a lovely if _utterly unimportant_ family) as a counterpoint to Caesar Augustus, and the other very important people (v.i.p.s) that Luke liked to list.  

This then becomes a choice that does separate Christians from non:  

A good number of people who have thoughtfully chosen not to believe that Jesus would indeed be who Christians claim him to be – Divine or the Son of God – simply find him too ordinary to be Divine.

Yet, to Christian believers, Jesus’ ordinariness actually becomes a proof of Jesus’ divinity because it serves to indicate that Jesus came truly for everybody and not simply for “important” people, that we are all children of God.

So to the question: So did this incident really happen?  Did Herod really have these children murdered in hopes of murdering the infant Jesus among them? Christians have gleefully responded that Herod (as two-bit despots like him over the ages) certainly _could_ have done so … even if the incident would have remained so small that it wouldn’t have been recorded anywhere for any length of time.

The question becomes one of response.  If children were murdered in this way by a despot like Herod in Jesus’ time, how should we then respond to similar outrages and tragedies in our time?

To this day, countless simple families, little children, and yes, aborted children, suffer similar indignities and similar fates.

It would seem clear that the response should be to defend the innocent.

So as an expression of that, I chose to put as the cover picture for this article a picture of one of the children who was separated at the border between the United States and Mexico in recent years. 

Playing with the lives of children like this should always be seen as wrong.