Friday

December 28, 2012

Feast of the Holy Innocents

How can anyone think of this feast day without relating the event to the recent massacure of 20 young students in Connecticut?  When there are tragedies such as what a group of individuals such as parents, relatives, friends and a community had to endure there are several questions:  Why?  Where is God in the lives of the families impacted by the actions of a deranged man?

It must have been no different in the days when young boys were slaughtered because a ruler feared the birth of a child who would become a king, a child who might remove the ruler from his throne.  Certainly there were the same questions:  Why?  Where is Yahweh?

Perhaps there is no immediate answer then or now.  Perhaps God did not want these young innocents to be so treated.  Yet it would seem that the circumstances were such that through these terrible activities God will use these young people to draw others to himself.  Perhaps.  Perhaps.  We shall not know until we meet our God.

We might wonder how Jesus may have reacted when he learned of the sacrifice of the young boys brought about by his own coming into the world.  Did Jesus learn about these victims as God?  Or simply as the son of Mary?  What impact must there have been in his heart?