Friday, 12/28/12
On this feast of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents we would do
well to turn our sorrow to the families of the twelve girls and eight boys who
were slaughtered in Newtown Connecticut on December 15. I am offering Mass
today for those children and for their families.
We cannot be sure that Herod brought about the death of the
children of Bethlehem who were two years old and younger. Of course we have
that story in Matthew’s Gospel, where Matthew next told us that Mary, Joseph
and Jesus fled to Egypt where they remained until after the death of Herod. Matthew went on to say that they then came back
to Jerusalem, but since Herod’s son Archelaus was ruling there, they went and settled anew in Nazareth.
What Matthew told us is entirely different from what St. Luke
wrote. According to Luke, Mary and Joseph had always lived in Nazareth before the
child was born, and they returned there just forty days after his birth.
The Bible stories very often are not factual. Their writers had
some message or moral to convey, and they chose traditional stories that helped
put across their point. Luke chose one set of infancy stories that were going
around, and Matthew chose another set of infancy narratives about jesus.
Anyway, today it is good for us to have this old feast to help
us remember and pray for the children and families of Newtown Connecticut.
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