Reflection on Today's Readings and the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Monday 28th December, 2020
Texts: 1 John 1:5-2:2; Ps. 124:2-8; Matt. 2:13-18
Today's feast reveals to us the other side of life. While we see the birth of Jesus Christ as good news to us, some see it as a threat. The birth of Jesus Christ filled the shepherds, Simeon, Anna, the magi, Mary, Joseph, and others with joy, but not Herod and his cohorts. King Herod and his cohorts breathed contempt and disdain towards his birth because they saw him as a threat. We see in their actions the rejection of the Lord of life. The gospel reading tells us what they did in their attempt to remove the threat out of their life: "Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the Wise Men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the Wise Men." Those children who were killed are the ones we celebrate today as the Holy Innocents; they died for Jesus Christ.
The killing of the Holy Innocents will always pose questions that are very difficult to answer, but could only tell us that our faith in God will always be shrouded in the dark. We cannot understand why those children should die for Christ. Must they die for Jesus Christ to be able to save us? The only answer we can deduce from the gospel reading is that it is the fulfilment of Jeremiah's prophecy. The brief note on the feast in Daily Missal reads thus: "The evangelist Matthew composes the story to parallel that of Moses, thus establishing the role of Jesus as the new leader, the one who is to guide God's people into freedom and salvation." The answers provided might not be able to pacify the parents of those children, but for us it reveals the kind of world Jesus Christ was born into: world filled with hatred and animosity; world where people are ready to kill to preserve power, position, status and wealth; world where life and human dignity are not respected. It tells us the kind of life Jesus has come to redeem us from; he has come to deliver us from kingdom of darkness and to bring us into the kingdom of light. Hence, the first reading says, "This is the message we have heard from Jesus Christ and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not live according to the truth; but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin." Darkness is the imagery of evil and sin - vice, hatred, animosity, envy and other kinds of sinful and wicked acts. Light is the imagery of good - virtues, righteousness, justice, love and other kinds of good and holy acts. We are called, today, to leave darkness for light. We are to walk in God, the light.
The feast also reminds us that as the birth of Jesus fills us with joy, some people are also disadvantaged and are crying. The same Jesus Christ is found in both joyful faces and sad faces, in joyful mood and sad mood; they both celebrate Him in different ways. The intermingling of the two brings balance and the world moves on. Everyone has a moment of sadness and a moment of joy; in both Jesus is present. Jesus never deserts us at any time, He is always with us no matter the situation we find ourselves. Let us always put our trust in Him, in Him alone.
O God, whom the Holy Innocents confessed and proclaimed on this day, not by speaking but by dying, grant, we pray, that the faith in you which we confess with our lips may also speak through our manner of life. Amen.
Fr. Andrew Olowomuke
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