MURDERING, MAIMING, AND MINIMIZING THE INNOCENT

The title of my homily is, “Murdering, Maiming, and Minimizing the Innocent.”

Today - December 28, has the feast of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. It has many possible messages. Bastin, Pinckers and Teheux in their God Day By Day Spiritual Reflections on the Readings of the Day,  Volume Four, write, about this text, Matthew 2:13-18, “Are they symbolic, those children who were massacred in Bethlehem? Or course they are, but we should not forget that symbols are always rooted in human realities, and the reality here is that of human suffering - people dying of hunger, the bitter complaints of exiles and the silence of frightened prisoners.” [Page 84]

With that in mind I put together this reflection for today.

In our lifetime we’ve seen the slaughter of the unborn - the Holy Innocents.

In our lifetime we have seen the slaughter of millions of children, women, men in the Holocaust.

In our lifetime we have seen the murder of all kinds of babies, children because of race and religion issues in Serbia, Macedonia, and the former Yugoslavian countries.

In our lifetime we have seen the same thing happen with the slaughter of so many in Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, in so many other African and Middle East countries.

In our lifetime we seen the Killing Fields in Cambodia and so many other places on the planet.

In our lifetime we have heard about various many priests and bishops who were not protective of young people in the sexual abuse stories in the Catholic Church.

In our lifetime we have heard how kids can get shortchanged in education - which can be a ladder out of poverty.

In our lifetime we have seen some rich get richer because of scams and skim offs and manipulation in the markets.

In our lifetime we have heard lies and “claimed innocence” when it comes to public people - in sports, the arts, politics - who try to explain ways out of living a life of lies, cheating, and misbehaving -  giving bad example to the young.

In our lifetime we’ve seen and heard people whose ethics and truth telling seems to have disappeared and they have walked in the dark and not in the light as we heard in today’s first reading from 1 John 1: 5-2:2.

In our lifetime we have heard people show little concern for the many migrants and their children who are “pitchforked” - as one preacher put it - from one place to the next.

In our lifetime we have heard politicians - and dictators - and elected officials -  concerned more about the polls and their numbers than the number of people who are suffering, starving and homeless.

In our lifetime we have heard people criticize prophets, priests, preachers, writers, world leaders, who have preached the Catholic Church’s Social Justice and Human Charity teachings - or have only been selective when it comes to these issues - with no concern for the hurting and the humbled - but only for their agenda.

In our lifetime we have seen and heard people who claim innocence when it comes to caring for our earth - not being aware of the health of all - for example poor children in West Virginia, Kentucky, China - whose lungs are damaged because of earth dumping and disregard of the reality of carbon emissions.

In our lifetime we have heard people screaming at children - hitting children - hurting children - with no concern for what they see with their eyes and hear with their ears.