Homily for December 28th, 2013: Matthew 2:13-18.
Which of us
does not remember the brutal killing of 20 young schoolchildren, first and
second graders, in Newtown/CT just over a year ago? It happened the Friday
before the third Sunday in Advent, which is called “Rejoice Sunday” because the
readings are about joy and rejoicing. I was away from St.
Louis, visiting friends in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington/DC, and
staying in the rectory of a large parish. I had prepared a homily for Rejoice
Sunday, on the theme of joy.
As soon as the
terrible news came from Connecticut,
I knew I could not preach about joy, when our hearts were breaking at the
slaughter these innocent children. Away from home, and without access to the
books I use for homily preparation, and the mass of material already on my
computer, I was unable to produce the full text which I would have done at home. I reflected long and hard about what I could say which would help
people grieving over this tragedy. And I prayed that the Holy Spirit would give
me the words I needed.
At 11 o’clock on that Sunday morning
I stood before a congregation of at least 300 people to speak about grief and
how God can bring out of evil. My own voice was breaking as I did so. When I
finished, I knew that God had answered my prayers for inspiration and guidance.
The whole congregation erupted in applause. And I remember saying to myself:
“It’s not about you, Jay, it is about the Lord.”
Today’s gospel
tells us about a tragedy every bit as great as that in Newtown one year ago. In a
frantic attempt to kill the baby king whom the wise men from the East had told
him about when they passed through Jerusalem two
years before, the cruel Gentile tyrant Herod ordered the slaughter of all the
boys in and near Bethlehem
two years old and younger.
We cannot
observe the feast of the Holy Innocents in America today without thinking of
the mass killing of unborn children, a quarter of all babies conceived, which
goes on day after day and year after year, leaving their mothers, most of them
acting under pressure from others, burdened for life with regrets, shame, and
guilt – a burden no woman should have to bear. This modern slaughter of the
innocents will end only when hearts and minds are changed and people become as ashamed
of abortion as we now are about slavery. For that we pray at Mass today.
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