Feast of the Holy
Innocents
December 28, 2015 8:30am
Today’s Feast of the Holy
Innocents presents a stark contrast with Christmas.
The children whom we call the
Holy Innocents are the victims of violence.
What a contrast this is with the peace
and serenity of the birth of Christ!
Our world, unfortunately, has
some similarities with the world that produced the massacre of the Holy
Innocents.
ISIS is the clearest example of
that.
But there are other examples of
violence being inflicted on people:
on religious or ethnic groups,
on individual persons,
and on the unborn.
Some of this violence is not
physical.
Some of it is emotional, and some
of it is verbal.
In fact, I wonder if verbal
violence, the words we use and the way we communicate with each other, I wonder
if this is the cause of a lot of the physical violence in our world.
So, as in Jesus’ world, in our
world too, there is violence and lack of peace.
In contrast to this, we have Jesus’
birth.
In fact, I wonder if the magnetic
attraction of the manger scene is there because it evokes our deepest and
truest identity.
It pulls up from within us who we
are created to be and who we really are.
Jesus is peaceful and not
violent.
Jesus invites and does not force.
He leads but is not domineering.
He is powerful in a spiritual way
and remains humble.
I suggest that we are drawn to Jesus’
way that begins in Bethlehem because this is who we really are deep down.
This is who God made us to be.
And so, if we allow ourselves to
be drawn to him and through him to become who we were made to be, then there
can be respect for one another and for all persons and through that there can also
be peace among us.
