The Mystery of the Holy Innocents, today's liturgical celebration, is of immense importance. Underrated!
Without this brutal reality, Christmas would degenerate into Disneyesque sentimentality. But this fact anchors the Nativity in the real world of horrific, apparently senseless suffering, evil, cruelty, death.
We have here the celebration of the psychopathic massacre of powerless, innocent infant boys...in triumphant, grateful Joy! This is crazy stuff! Very, very Catholic! (And Orthodox, and Coptic!)
"Innocent" etymologically from the Latin means "not harm." The innocent has done no harm; not guilty. The victims, the little ones, are entirely innocent. Their suffering and death apparently senseless. But they are equally free of having done good: they can claim no virtue, merit or achievement by an act of the will. They are passive. And yet we honor them as saints. Our first martyrs. Crucial mysteries of our Catholic faith are manifest here.
The Value of Suffering. Their suffering, entirely involuntary and indeliberate, plays an eventful part in the drama of salvation. They already, in some mysterious way, share in the passion of Christ by which we are saved. Their pain and demise are not finally sad or tragic, but triumphant and joyous.
In them we see all the suffering of the innocent. Those today in Ukraine, Haiti and others displaced. (There are more refugees today than any other time in history.) We see those raped and tortured. We see the aborted. We see those bullied and abused. We see those afflicted with self-hatred and vulnerable to drugs, despair, self-harm, and confusion in sexuality and gender. We see little ones miscarried.
Especially in this joyous, "jolly" season of Christmas, we see all suffering depression, grief, anxiety, despair, self-hatred, and abandonment as their agony is intensified by the festivity. Christmas requires the Holy Innocents.
Primacy of God's Grace over Human Agency. Their suffering and death give witness to Christ by way of God's grace mysteriously at work, not due to any merit, virtue or achievement of their own. They were baptized "in his blood" but we "in water." We in freedom accept and engage in our salvation but always aware of the vast, indeed infinite primacy of God's gratuitous initiative.
Primacy, Over the Spoken Word, of Silence, Crucified Flesh, and the Spilling of Blood. These little, impotent, inarticulate ones are the first witnesses to Christ. They cannot speak. Some of them cannot yet form a concept in their mind. By their existence, in their suffering and passivity and death, in their flesh and blood without volition, intellection or decision they participate in and announce the arrival, life, passion, death and resurrection of our Messiah.
Filicide (Killing of one's son.)
Historically, aside from the Gospel of Matthew, there is no early evidence of this event. Biographers of Herod consider it a fabrication, a myth. It resembles, of course, the massacre of the Hebrew male infants in the time of Moses. The theological analogy of Passover is obvious and significant. Early traditions among the Greeks, Syrians and Copts number the victims at 14,000, 64,000 and 144,000. These are clearly not factual. The old Catholic Encyclopedia calculated that the historic Bethlehem of that time would have sustained a couple dozen deaths.
Historically, we might be agnostic on the historical accuracy of the event. It may have happened; it may have not happened. But the factual details may not matter to the integrity and truth of the Mystery. Ancient biographers of Herod the Great omit this event but portray him as cruel and bloodthirsty. It is recorded by a friend-biographer that he killed three of his own sons whom he accused of trying to kill him. He had 11 wives, believing Judaism allowed polygamy. He was a Jew loyal to Rome. One of his sons was Herod Antipas who committed incest with his sister-in-law, killed John the Baptist, tormented the silent Jesus and then befriended his enemy Pilate after the passion of Jesus. Dying of a painful sickness, he attempted suicide. Fearing that he would not be mourned on his death he issued an order (that was not implemented by his heirs) that innocents be murdered after his death to ensure public attention.
We see that the actual Herod killed many innocents, notably his own sons. This illuminates the temptation inherent to paternity: a Great Mystery! In fathering a child, specifically a son, the man rejoices in his generativity. But it brings with it a reminder of his own mortality. This son is a different person; is not himself or an extension of himself. Within a few decades his son will surpass him in strength, stamina, competence and appeal. Every father, with John the Baptist before his younger cousin, "must decrease, he must increase." One day he himself will die; and be survived by his son. Additionally, his son is a man and every man is, for another man, potentially an antagonist, rival, competitor: for power, status and the affection of a woman. And so, the father in beholding his son has two paths: to accept his eventual diminishment and death, generously, and rejoice in the different life of his son. Or, to resent this rival to his narcissism, and configure him into an extension of himself or destroy him. Herod the Great, the Anti-Father, clearly chose the second path, the dark side.
Agonistic Destiny of the Masculine and the Feminine
It is striking that boys, not girls are massacred. This echoes Pharaoh's slaughter of the cohort of Moses. We see here the destiny of the male to spill in blood, to suffer violence in the agonistic struggle with the enemy. The boys of Bethlehem. John the Baptist. Jesus. Stephen. All the apostles, save John. In some way every man must prepare to fight, suffer, spill blood, and die.
Not so for women. Consider the women of Bethlehem. The loss, for a mother, of a child. This is greater pain than that of the infant whose torment lasted maybe a few seconds. Far greater than that of the warrior who dies painlessly in the passion and fervor of combat. The woman also spills blood, but not in conflict; in her procreative capacity as mother. In compassion, her pain...that of Mary at Calvary...seems to equal or even exceed that of Jesus who even as he expires is performing his mission as he forgives the penitent, his executioners, gives Mary and John to each other, and surrenders himself to the Father.
The Splendor of the Mystery of the Holy Innocents
For us who are vulnerable to suffering and sin, this Mystery of the Holy Innocents may exceed in beauty, comprehensiveness and significance even the feasts of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. We face here: the absurdity of innocent suffering, misery of the grieving mothers, the agony of the masculine protagonists, the gravity of evil and malice. But above all the agency and triumph of God's grace: in the face of indescribable evil and among the most impotent of us.
Debt of gratitude: my own appreciation of this Mystery I owe to the classic, stunning treatment of it by the French Catholic poet Charles Peguy.
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