Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the killing of approximately 30 male children by an outrageously infuriated Herod, who, “when he realized he was deceived by the Magi,…ordered the massacre of all of the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years and younger…(Mt. 2: 13-18). Statistics inform us that every ten seconds, in the U.S., alone, a child is abused, raped or killed by out-of-control adults. Since 1990, 10,000 American children have died at the hands of their parents or caregivers (Source: DreamCatchers for Abused Children). The murder of those one sees as a threat, an inconvenience, a nuisance, a person to be used and then thrown away—is a sin against humanity throughout humankind’s existence, beginning with Cain’s slaughter of his brother Abel. The weeping and sobbing “heard in Ramah” thunders throughout the world of today by thousands of parents and grandparents mourning the abortion, the abduction, the abuse and the murder of their children by family members, caregivers, strangers, human traffickers, pedophiles who roam the neighborhoods looking for innocent, and many times helpless, victims. The souls of some of these victims, in the words of today’s psalm, have “been rescued like a bird from the fowler’s snare.” Others, however, continue to be abused. Who will rescue us from this horror? Who will break the snares of evil that blanket the world of today in this form of cruelty? In faith, we know that, with Christ’s coming into the world, we have been set free. Evil will not triumph. Satan has been defeated by the obedience of Christ to the will of the Father, our salvation. May God hasten the day when our hope in the salvation of the entire world, on the one hand, from pedophiles, abortionists, child-murderers, rapists, and abusers will be fully realized. On other hand, may each one of us also be set free from that which infuriates us. May we be healed of our woundedness lest we, in turn, wound others in secret revenge of our own abusers.
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