Thursday, December 28, 2023
The Fourth Day of Christmas
Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Learning to live the life I’ve been given
On the Franciscan website today we read:
The Holy Innocents are few in comparison to the genocide and abortion of our day. But even if there had been only one killed, we recognize the greatest treasure God put on the earth—a human person, destined for eternity, and graced by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Herod killed all the baby boys in Bethlehem, desperate to find the baby ordained, he thought, to take his throne from him. He had already killed his wife, his brother, and his sister’s two husband. Herod was visibly brutal and bloodthirsty.
We are quieter about it, when it comes to genocide and abortion., mostly silent, complicit in our turning away and finding other things to look at. There are plenty of other topics to discuss, and often there are “sides” to arguments about who is at fault for the blood that flows.
I think about my mother and my aunt, women born in the 1920’s. Aunt Mary did not marry, or have babies, but she paid close attention to her sister, my mother, who had three of us in the 1950’s. I was born in 1949, Mary Kay in 1952 and John in 1956. We all lived in the yellow submarine of central Illinois, protected by thousands of miles from threats more obvious on the American coasts. Eugene McCarthy did his best to alert Americans to the dangers of communism and infiltrators in the government, in the media, in … anywhere and everywhere.
But by the time John was born, McCarthyism no longer carried much punch. There seemed to be little to fear in central Illinois. Neither genocide nor abortion got much attention, though each day many people somewhere were being killed. The town of Lincoln never seemed in danger of becoming a bloodbath like Bethlehem.
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth. But 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.
German-Lutheran kids like me grew up with a measure of false guilt, inherited from their parents, who inherited it from their parents. They also grew up with a measure of self-righteousness, I think, and maybe there’s even more of that than the false guilt. I know personally I have lived with both, more of less, all my life and of course, passed it on to our three kids.
So I feel guilty for having been protected from so much of the awfulness of the world. And I feel self-righteous too, assuming that everyone else has been protected as well, forgetting that of course they have not. Babies might be killed before they’re born, or born into war zones, or like the baby boys of Bethlehem, slaughtered without justice.
If we say, “We are without sin,” we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Some baby boys in Bethlehem escaped the sword. Jesus himself was carried out of the village at night to Egypt, where he lived with his family until an angel told his parents it was safe to return to Israel. The baby girls were not touched. Should their parents feel guilty, or self-righteous, or anything other than compassion? Of course not. We cannot control things like we want, and it’s not our fault.
Mostly not our fault. I can’t quite get away from the old German immigrant feeling. Surely it must have been me!
My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.
God pleads with us! Take off your scrupulosity capes and be my created children. Let me run the show. I will show you what to do and what to say, and it will be important in making life better on earth rather than worse. But always, remember that I am God and you are not. Do not be afraid. For I have overcome the world.
My soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare.
(1 John 1, Psalm 124, Matthew 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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