Childermas. Feast of the holy innocents. Today goes by a variety of names. When it's observed -- if it's ever observed -- it names those little children, specifically boys, in and around Bethlehem, who by the accident of birth had the unfortunate luck to be born when Jesus was born. Herod had them massacred in order to kill Jesus.
It's odd to have their deaths mark a day so close to Christmas -- which is why, I suppose, so few of us really even remember today.
But if we're honest, all the haze around Christmas day has already lifted. The peace and tranquility that names the holy day is shattered so quickly in a world such as ours.
Violence, you see, is the way the world is supposed to work. And threats to power cannot be tolerated, particularly when that power supports the state.
Where does that kind of cruelty come from? In grew in Herod in stages (as is true for all of us), because it's bequeathed in us from others. Hatred, rooted in fear, is handed on down through the generations, and the murderous inherit a thinking that there are some who are not worthy of their respect and love. Perhaps they are a threat, perhaps their relatives did something in the past. Perhaps they may do something in the future. Herod was clearly a fearful man, so fearful that he was unmoved by the cries of wailing parents, or of suffering infants. His heart had grown cruel through repeated insensitivity inflicted on others, due to raging and irrational fear.
There's an old Christian Latin hymn that sings:
Let the one with ears to hear witness the truth of this day:
It's odd to have their deaths mark a day so close to Christmas -- which is why, I suppose, so few of us really even remember today.
But if we're honest, all the haze around Christmas day has already lifted. The peace and tranquility that names the holy day is shattered so quickly in a world such as ours.
Violence, you see, is the way the world is supposed to work. And threats to power cannot be tolerated, particularly when that power supports the state.
Where does that kind of cruelty come from? In grew in Herod in stages (as is true for all of us), because it's bequeathed in us from others. Hatred, rooted in fear, is handed on down through the generations, and the murderous inherit a thinking that there are some who are not worthy of their respect and love. Perhaps they are a threat, perhaps their relatives did something in the past. Perhaps they may do something in the future. Herod was clearly a fearful man, so fearful that he was unmoved by the cries of wailing parents, or of suffering infants. His heart had grown cruel through repeated insensitivity inflicted on others, due to raging and irrational fear.
There's an old Christian Latin hymn that sings:
Crudelis Herodes, Deum Regem venire quid times? Non eripit mortalia, Qui regna dat caelestia (Cruel Herod what do you fear in the King and God to come? He seizes not earthly things who gives heavenly kingdoms).In the end, it's fear that drives Herod -- that drives us -- to commit the violence we commit in order to prop up our flimsy claims to power.
Let the one with ears to hear witness the truth of this day:
