The Feast of the Holy Innocents takes place on 28th December.
Doctor Who tells us that time is “wibbly wobbly timey wimey”. That is what we experience throughout the forty days of Christmastide.
Just a few days before the Remembrance of the Holy Innocents we celebrated Jesus’s birth as a teeny tiny human baby. Then at this feast day we jump forward a couple of years to after the magi’s visit and Herod is ordering the slaughter of many children in an attempt to kill Jesus. Then the following week we go back to that visit of the magi before we leap forward to Jesus being a man at His baptism and then a couple of weeks later Jesus is a teeny tiny baby again as He is presented at the Temple.
But for now, let us return to the day when we remember the Holy Innocents whose deaths Herod was responsible for.
Each year we remember that Joseph heeded the warnings and instructions he received, that he took his family to Egypt and that as a result of this the prophecy was fulfilled and Jesus was kept safe to grow into a man, fulfil His mission and be our salvation.
But we skim over the bit where many innocent children were killed by a scared but cruel man who wanted Jesus dead because he thought he would lose his power.
“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.”
In the Holocaust, approximately 1.5 million Jewish children, and tens of thousands of non-Jewish children were murdered.
The Nazi’s targeted children as part of their ideological goal to create a “radically pure” society and eliminate future generations of “unwanted groups” including Romani, Polish and disabled children.
In the hope of killing one child, Herod had many killed.
Looking back at Moses, who came into the world to bring a kind of deliverance, a new king had risen to power in Egypt. This new king knew nothing of Joseph1 (the Israelite who saved Egypt from the famine). He just saw how numerous the Israelite people were and, wanting to stop the numbers increasing, ordered the death of every Israelite boy born.
There is a constant battle between good and evil in the world and in our own lives.
Evil will always lash out violently towards good. Evil will use any means necessary in an attempt to retain power. There will be resistance when we do good in the world. There will be temptations as we turn away from sin. The strength of these temptations show how committed to change and how committed to doing good we are.
There is wickedness in the world. There are, very sadly, people in this world who will slaughter or arrange the slaughter of thousands and thousands of beautiful, innocent, babies and children, for their own ends, to get what they want and to keep their power.
Evil does not hold back it’s hate for the young and God does not hold back His grace from the young.
God gives us His grace freely and in abundance out of love for us. He is a generous God and there is more than enough grace to encompass everyone no matter their age. He protects us with His grace.
Our world today is, again very sadly, not that different from the world throughout history. We can still see the callousness of Herod and those like him. We still live in a world where innocents are murdered.
We can lament and cry for them. We can pray for their families and friends. But the massacres still continue. Change begins in the human heart and is expressed in what we do and think and say.
It is hard to change a world ingrained with death. But we can contribute to this change. We can demonstrate charity and patience and sanctity of life.
Christ came for our lives, to give us life abundant, sacred and unending.
Herod represents all the powers that stand against Christ; all the people that reject Christ and all the elements of ourselves that want nothing to do with Christ and prefer their independence to His will.
What are we willing to destroy because of our refusal of Christ? What aspects of our own lives and the lives of others are we ready to destroy because of our refusal of Christ?
Herod’s massacre of the innocents is a warning to us. After his death, Herod’s kingdom was divided between the sons he hated. In less than 100 years, everything Herod had built, including the monuments he had intended as structures for his glory, had been reduced to ruins.
Herod is remembered as a petty tyrant. He is not mourned.
We mourn the innocents, the children of Bethlehem, yet they are so often forgotten.
But, in heaven, “where like stars, His children crowned, all in white shall wait“.
- Genesis ↩︎
Just because 