Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Fourth Day of Christmas
Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The hopes and fears of all the years
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt.
Perhaps the soldiers of Herod were coming over the hill toward Bethlehem from the other side. Many mothers would be stricken by the cruelty of those soldiers, under orders of course. Their baby boys would die. Herod “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem two years old and under.”
A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children, since they were no more.
The Bible does not mince words. Blood soaked stories curl the pages of both testaments. This is one of the worst. Jesus and his family escape by God’s intervention, but nothing intervenes to stop the deaths of so many other little boys.
Jesus does grow up, at first in Egypt and then back in Galilee, and his story becomes the story of our savior, our messiah, our hero, our God. And then maybe a hundred years later, the disciple whom Jesus loved (John) wrote of what he heard from Jesus:
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
God did not prevent the sin of Herod, nor does God prevent my sin. But in his patience with my foolish and selfish choices, he is always ready to forgive my sin, and Herod’s too, I have no doubt, if Herod found his way onto his knees.
How can this be? Hitler? Herod? Jesus clarified our understanding of sin when he said anger with a man makes me subject to judgment just as much as murdering him. Does that also cover the massacre of the innocents, or the gas chambers of Auschwitz? Drunk drivers killing without even realizing what they’re doing? The list of killers goes on and on. How can God forgive them all?
If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
God will not forgive what we will not acknowledge or admit.
If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and his word is not in us.
But God is not a liar. God’s “word” of forgiveness is not in us. We are the liars.
If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.
One of my favorite prayers, the Divine Chaplet, includes these words:
Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.
Surely Sr. Faustina was familiar with the words of St. John. Surely she loved those words. Just as surely we all are loved by God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whether mysteriously during a massacre of infants, or peacefully under an apple tree on a beautiful day in May.
It is neither possible nor necessary to understand this kind of timeless love, love which transcends birth and death, joy and sorrow, pushing all our human limits back, back, back, set into God’s perspective. Madeleine L’Engle spoke of the Incarnation in the same way: “It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy.”
Like every “anno domini,” this year skates quickly to its end. Dickens allowed his ghosts of Christmas present to live only until the Christmas clock struck twelve.  As the clock strikes on December 31, I want to be more caught up in the “domini” part, and less the “anno.” Our years belong to God, who is our Abba Father, and we need never be afraid.
(1 John 1-2, Psalm 124, Matthew 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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