Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.
The world still searches for Christ to destroy him. Though of course no one believes himself to be hunting for an individual or threatening anyone with death, nevertheless, the world feels threatened by Jesus just as did Herod. Herod was greatly troubled when the magi told him that they had come to do homage to the newborn king of the Jews. He was insecure because he felt that his own authority was threatened. This isn't surprising from a king who killed who own sons on the suspicion of treason. The world is comfortable with Christianity and with Christians only insofar as it can control them. When they become a threat to its agenda they too become targets of persecution and martyrdom. But since the world's perspective is one that countenances sin and flees from self-sacrifice, the way of the cross is always provocative when it is genuine. Even we Christians are tempted to silence the voices in and around us that call us to a deeper surrender to Jesus. We say are tempted to believe that Jesus would never call us to vacate the throne at the center of our lives. How, we ask, could he know better than ourselves what is for our greatest good?
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night
and departed for Egypt.
If Jesus seems distant from us, perhaps it is actually because we have not welcomed him, meeting him instead with demands of silence, with veiled threats if he makes demands that would constrain our autonomy. Yet Jesus does not go to Egypt in order to abandon his people. He goes because he is a new Moses who will survive attempts to kill him, to persecute him, who will execute judgment on the idolatry of Egypt, and who will lead us through the desert, teaching us the new law of grace, to the definitive promised land.
Who is actually qualified to accept and follow Jesus? Who can surrender completely their freedom, without complaint, knowing that in doing so the hope of something so much greater than this life can be found?
He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity
two years old and under,
in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.
Before the children murdered by Herod could do anything to earn God's favor they were already given the grace and glory of being his first martyrs, of being witnesses, not defeated, but victorious by the power of the King for whom they died.
In this death of the children the precious death of all Christ’s martyrs is figured; that they were infants signifies, that by the merit of humility alone can we come to the glory of martyrdom- St. Bede.
On the one extreme we have Herod. On the other, the Holy Innocents. These, finally, are the two archetypal options from which we may choose. Will we attempt to preserve our earthly kingdom at all costs? Or will we entrust ourselves, completely and entirely, by heart, mind, and strength, to the Lord, trusting in him for the victory?
It was night when Jesus departed from Egypt. But in him the day would return, because he was the eternal day, and the true light of the world. He was the one who would shine on the people who lived in darkness and the shadow of death. He was the dawn from on high that would break once more on Israel. The Holy Innocents celebrated his return from the vantage of their home in heavenly glory. They did not begrudge or second guess their own role as witnesses. They did not entertain wistful what-ifs about how their lives might have turned out. Even today they pray for us that, as Christ comes to bring us light, we will welcome him.
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.
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