Holy Innocents

1 John 5-2:2; Psalm 124 Our Soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler's snare; Matthew 2:13-18

Today we pause for a moment to remember the Holy Innocents.

Herod in his blind and cruel rage, motivated by a inordinate ambition for control, sent his men to Bethlehem and the surround territory to murder all the male children 2 years and under.

Herod in this diabolical act picks a fight with heaven, wanting to end the life of Jesus, while just a babe in swaddling clothes.

The Holy Innocents, themselves children left without defense, become a holocaust.

Why?

Because Herod chooses to rule from fear.

Thus, children, innocent victims, become spotless lambs. All because of mistaken Identity. They were mistaken to be Christ because of their physical attributes, their age and size.

But are we not all called to be mistaken for Christ. Are we not invited to the reality of mistaken identity where we are looked upon as an alter Christus, another Christ, though, not because of our physical attributes but for the way we live from the heart and how we choose to be spotless lambs, victims who share in the victory of Christ over sin and death in our life.

And what of Mary of Joseph and Jesus, fleeing to Egypt. There they go into a strange land with strange customs and language and food. They abandon all they know and enter into the unknown. Like so many immigrants and refugees and migrant workers, Mary and Joseph associate with the poorest of the poor, outcast in a land not their own.

They are on the run. They are in hiding. Fresh into the world Jesus is already being persecuted. The world already turns against its savior, frowns upon redemption, chooses to live for itself and close itself up to the offer of heaven on earth.

Already from the beginning the cross looms large on the horizon. If they do this to a child, what will they do to the man?