THEY DIED THAT WE MAY HAVE LIFE

THE HOLY INNOCENTS, MARTYRS 

1 Jn 1:5-2:2; Ps 124:2-5,7-8; Mt 2:13-18

Our Passive Suffering and Redemption

The celebration of the Holy Innocents comes up on the fourth day within the Octave of Christmas celebration. The Church fittingly celebrates these innocent children who testified to the truth of the Incarnation by their lives when they could hardly speak. By their passive offering of their lives to assuage the fury of Herod, they landmarked the historical interval of the event and mystery of the Incarnation of the Word. With the celebration of their life and death, the Church puts forth for our meditation and contemplation the secret works of God in the suffering part of humanity, especially those whose sufferings are not of their own making. They share in the scapegoat redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ. God does not remove the sufferings of this large number of people from that of Jesus Christ; though they do not actively confess faith in his Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection, they still find in him the leader and Saviour. As noted, the Eternal Word assumed everything human in the mystery of his Incarnation. Hence, the mystery of the scapegoat finds its fulfilment in him, who enlightens everyone that comes into existence. Because we understand every condition and situation that human beings find themselves only through the light that the Word sheds in our darkness, the Holy Innocents proclaim his coming in human nature.

Thus, we celebrate them fittingly within Christmas, for as we read in John’s first letter, anyone not living in sin is living in union with Jesus Christ. “But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light, we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” Because the Holy Innocents did not commit any sin, they were living in the light of Jesus Christ; his blood will purify them and all others who died in the light. Though the Holy Innocents and all others who suffer as scapegoats for human sins and wicked tendencies are innocent of the cause of their suffering, they are not pure as not to need the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ. As members of one human family, we suffer various excesses of human sinful and evil actions; we also own the death the Holy Innocents died and with them confess our sinfulness, that the blood of the Lamb of God may purify us of all sins and redeem us from eternal death. “If we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth; but if we acknowledge our sins, then God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from everything that is wrong.” If the Holy Innocents died for us to have salvation, then we live and confess faith in Jesus Christ that their death may not be in vain and that we and they may inherit the divine life in the Word.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews says that the power of Jesus Christ to save is utterly certain. It means our salvation through the Incarnation of the Eternal Word is complete and holistic. In the Gospel, we see that the child Jesus fled to Egypt with his mother, Mary, and Joseph. He did not flee and abandon these children to perish, but his flight was their salvation and the salvation of all of us. “So Joseph got up and, taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt, where he stayed until Herod was dead.” God permitted the fury of Herod to harm the children physically in his infinite wisdom but protected the life that mattered most, namely, Jesus Christ. Just as the Father sometimes permits the fury of the evil one and his cohorts to afflict our physical body or temporal life, he preserves our eternal life by strengthening our faith during physical afflictions or death. “Herod was furious when he realised that he had been outwitted by the wise men, and in Bethlehem and its surrounding district he had all the male children killed who were two years old or under, reckoning by the date he had been careful to ask the wise men.” We know that God permitted all to happen because they all happened in fulfilment of the scriptures. It is ultimately by the Incarnation of the Eternal Word that our life, like a bird, has escaped from the snare of the fowler.

Let us pray: 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. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.