THE HOLY INFANTS OF BETHLEHEM

“The timeless King was sought by Herod within time, * but he could neither find nor kill Him. * Instead, he killed the innocent children; * he made them martyrs without ever realizing it. * They are now residents of the Kingdom on high, * exposing/reproving (ἐλέγχοντας, обличая) his madness/derangedness (παραφροσύνη, пребезумие) forever.” (2nd Vespers-hymn, Lord I have cried, December 29)

On December 29 (NC) we celebrate “The 14,000 Holy Infants Slain by Herod.” The above-quoted hymn explains why we celebrate these infants as “martyrs,” that is, as “witnesses” – because that’s what the word “martyr” means, in case you didn’t know. Herod posed before the Magi as one who wanted to “come and worship Him also” (Mt 2:8), but his massacre of the infants exposed his true intention. Hence, the Holy Infants bear witness to, or expose, as it says in this hymn, “his madness forever.” They also prefigure the later, “martyric” death of Christ, caused by a similar madness, of human beings resisting the change that “the timeless King” (as He is called in this hymn) brings us in and through time.

God’s only-begotten Son was not spared from the madness that killed the Holy Infants, nor was His Virgin-Mother spared the great sorrow of “Rachel,” of the mothers of Bethlehem. But her sorrow and the death of Christ, a horrible, sadistic and slow death on the Cross, was to happen at a later time, when “the timeless King” was meant to die, and not when this Herod wanted.

The only “answer” to the impossible questions raised by innocent suffering is in its being shared, and overcome in New Life, by our loving God’s beloved Son, and His faithful Mother that receives both the sorrow and the joy of that paschal journey. All of us, as the Mother Church, are invited to participate in that joy-creating sorrow, even while the Herods of this world are being exposed in their madness: “Do not lament Me, O Mother, seeing Me in the tomb, for I shall arise and lift up with glory, incessantly as God, those who by faith and love magnify you.”