HOLY INNOCENTS

CHRISTMAS’  INNOCENTS

MODELS OF DEFENCELESS CHILDREN
  The Holy Innocents are traditionally understood to have received their baptism of blood by their unspoken witness to Christ, the newborn King, and throughout the centuries they have been represented as the models of defenceless children who are heartlessly slaughtered or neglected. No reason whatsoever can justify the taking of innocent life or the exploitation of children for material gain or pleasure.
                    “O little town of Bethlehem,
                     How still we see the lie.”
Within a few days that stillness was rudely shattered. The “silent night” was broken by the cries of toddlers as they painfully bled to death and by the shrieks of the mothers as their infants  were torn from their bosoms and cut to pieces. Nuts and bolts against innocuous flesh and blood. Once again the powerless paid the price of power. The angels’ carols made way for the counterpoint of lamentations that rent the air as the martial murderers rode away sheathing their swords dripping with the blood of an unequal battle. But those lackeys of the regime could not face their families that night and lied to their children about the crimson on their weapons, for they knew in their heart of hearts it was they who had lost the battle.
  “Daddy, you went into battle today ?  Did the enemy out up a good fight ? Oh ! You’re a great warrior. You must have simply.....”
“Daddy, why are you turning your eyes away ?  You didn’t lose the battle ?  Oh, Daddy, you lost the battle !”
CHILD VICTIMS  -  OUR TEACHERS
  Whoever kills a child, physically or morally, only destroys himself, since “their angels stand before the Father” who will vindicate his children. What happened to those children in Bethlehem happens to millions more of their kind in our world today. One can refer to the “killing fields” of Cambodia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America, or to the living death of child labour and prostitution, the blank emptiness produced by divorce and separation, the slow disintegration of the moral personality in the consumerist and hedonistic ambience that the Pope has called “the culture of death.” Last November  witnessed the tragic and avoidable deaths of 28 school children in a bus accident, that had no other cause but utter human disregard.  As much as we lament the innocent victims of Herod’s hatred, our hearts go out to those Delhi children, so also to the little ones who perished in the horrific carnage in Haryanna in 1995. They had happily assembled for their annual prize distribution, their eyes glinting with hope and excitement, only to have the gift of life snatched from them as fire raged through the pavilion. But the trophy denied them by man was more than made up for by their  Heavenly Father. And by a providential reversal of rôles, those little students became teachers in death.  They have taught us that we cannot be frivolous with the care of young lives, that life is too fragile for little children to be exposed to shock and wounding. Their final message was that the young expect the best from us.

  The prophet Isaiah had said, “The child will put his hand in the adder’s lair and not be hurt”  -  a picture of childlike innocence and perfect security. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and don’t prevent them, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” It means that children must not be marginalised but brought to the centre because they are the stuff and substance of God’s household. This year UNICEF celebrates 52 years of its existence. UNICEF is an emergency fund for children.  Is there an emergency ?  With one child in three going hungry to bed, and hundreds of millions of them working 20 hours a day, there is always an emergency.

THE CHILD’S CHRISTMAS
  All this tells us why we need Christmas  -  that the child for whom there is no room in the world’s inn will occupy our hearts instead, leaving no room there for death.  Childhood was the invention of Christianity from the moment Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.”  From then on childhood has begun to have a future. Thoughts of the future somehow become interwoven with the idea of innocence. Now for the first time an infant became a symbolic figure  -  and his mother together with him:  Mother and Child.  And all fall prostrate before him, becoming as innocent as babes themselves.  Here we have a child who is a constant reminder that in God the child is never extinct.
Today we have the God-Child !