Word to the Wise
Wednesday, December 28, 2022 - Dec. 28 - Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs
[1 John 1:5-2:2 and Matt 2:13-18]When the magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him." Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, Out of Egypt I called my son. [Matthew]
The feast of the Holy Innocents has become a kind of patronal feast day for all children, especially the unborn, who suffer abuse. The story itself in the Gospel According to Matthew echoes the story of Moses' birth in the Book of Exodus [1:15-22] in which Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew children to be destroyed at birth because the Hebrews were becoming too numerous. As in so much of this gospel, the evangelist makes sure to point out that what happened in the story of the flight into Egypt was in fulfillment of prophecies (Hosea and Jeremiah).
The distortion of individual liberty to justify the destruction of an unborn child is a terrible commentary on our world and not just on the American scene. Those who take comfort in the recent Supreme Court decision in the Hobbs case should note that it does not address the rights of the unborn but simply shifted the legal matter down to the states. But the matter is larger than the issue of abortion as anyone who works in the field of Child Protection Services can tell us. (I attended meetings of a child protection team at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver back in 1974-77).
The feast of the Holy Innocents should remind us of the vulnerability of the human person in infancy, from conception to legal adulthood! Parents/family, government, educational authorities, unscrupulous employers, etc. all have power over children. Pharaoh and Herod have their counterparts today in those who abuse children, born or unborn. A society that fails to protect its youth destroys its own future. The lesson taught in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve thought they could be as powerful as God must still be tragically learned in any decision to harm a child, born or unborn. AMEN