Feast of the Holy Innocents 28th December 2018. St Paul’s Athens

Rev Canon L W Doolan

 

Most of the details surrounding the birth of Jesus come from St. Luke’s gospel. However Matthew gives some additional material such as the visit of the Magi to the Christ-child; the Flight into Egypt, a much ignored little piece of information but of course the subject of much icon interest and not surprisingly of great importance to Coptic Christians in Egypt; and the story that we recount today – namely the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents.

Herod the Great was a wily man, and a brittle ruler – he felt vulnerable under the Roman authorities, and was jealous of his own powers. He seeks to trick the Wise Men into telling him where they find the child Messiah. They are wise before the event and being warned in a dream, the place of so much human wisdom, they return back to their mysterious homes by a different route.

Also by a dream, and not for the first time, Joseph leads his wife and child to Egypt for safety. They remained there until this crafty fox  Herod had died.

Many others were not so fortunate. Matthew gives us the harrowing detail of the killing of innocent boy children who might be close to the age of Jesus.

‘Herod the King, In his raging, Charged he hath this day.His men of might, In his own sight, All children young to slay.’

Words from the well known Coventry Carol sung in many Carol Services at Christmas. These innocent children get mixed up in the power struggles and political intrigues of a corrupt and ruthless leader.

 

Today the church honours these Holy Innocents. The Orthodox tradition numbers them at 14,000. We do so realizing the eternal truths contained in this tragic episode – that in so many of the struggles in our world it is the children who suffer – they get deprived of the beauty of their childhood, forced to take inadequate adult decisions about survival long before their time, manipulated and exploited by people whose ideologies these little ones could barely understand. We have images of boy soldiers; of the children left climbing piles of rubble in war torn regions; of baby girls being left on rubbish heaps in India just because of their gender, of children sent out to beg and steal for gang masters.

 

These Holy Innocents of 2000 years ago jog our memories and sharpen our attention to how the innocent, often tiny innocents, suffer so much.  St. Matthew, the gospel writer, is reminded of the line from Jeremiah the prophet ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’ (Mt 2, 18).