Feast of the Holy
Innocents, martyrs
(I John 1:5-2:2; Matthew 2:13-18)
In Europe you might find
your car’s tires without any air today.
Or perhaps there will be three pizzas which you didn’t order, delivered
to your door. The Feast of the Holy
Innocents is Europe ’s equivalent to the
American April Fools Day. It is a time
to play practical jokes on good-natured people.
Some may be shocked by the European frivolity on a day that memorializes
the slaughter of children. Perhaps Holy
Innocents Day jokesters just take to heart the belief that the infants have
gone to God. “So why not rejoice?” they
might ask. Somehow, however, that is
just too casual an attitude. It fails to
consider the grotesque injustice of the blood of children. It mocks, for example, the outrage at a
public policy which permits abortion on demand.
It begs the question, “Why be born at all?”
Catholics educated before Vatican II easily recite the
answer to this last question. We live “to
know, love, and serve God in this world and to be happy with him in the next.” The tragedy of children dying, then, is the
irreversible equivalent of their minds being wasted. Dead children cannot come to know God very
well. Yes, they should receive the
beatific vision. And there might be something marvelous about seeing God
through children’s eyes. But just as the
art connoisseur will appreciate aspects of a Rubens painting that completely
escape the uncultured so growing in wisdom should make us more enthralled at
God’s glory. It is good to grow old if
we accordingly grow in wisdom.
Reciprocally, it is a tragedy when we die young.
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