Childermas

Propers: The Feast of Holy Innocents, A.D. 2016 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

To say that modern society has trouble dealing with grief is an understatement. We stand transfixed by the grave. By confining our ill to hospitals and our elderly to nursing homes, we try to insulate ourselves from suffering and death. Yet soon enough it comes knocking. And few things make postmodern man more uncomfortable than a neighbor truly wracked with grief.

We offer platitudes, greeting card slogans, because we don’t know how to deal with it. Ours in a consumerist society: one that always pushes away transcendent goods so that we may focus on proximate goods. I don’t have to think about the big questions when I’m busy picking my evening’s entertainment from a menu of infinite choice. Grief, death, and suffering remind us that most of the stuff that occupies our mind from day to day is just that—stuff. And ultimately, stuff doesn’t matter. But if we point that out too loudly or too often, the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

This can be especially troublesome during the holidays, a time when grief proves particularly acute. When we are called to gather with family and loved ones around the joys of hearth and home, we are poignantly reminded of those who are no longer with us, of those relationships from Christmases past that have withered, or perhaps of those children with whom we’d hoped to celebrate, yet who never came to birth. We mourn lost possibilities as much as anything else.

I think it’s fair to say that society would have us put on a false face during times such as these. Fake it ‘til you make it. Force yourself to be holly jolly, so as not to be a downer. Who has time to grieve, after all, when there’s so much stuff to buy? But this is the voice of the consumerist Christmas, not the true Christ Mass. In Church, we know what it is to grieve, to be wounded, to be broken. And we do not cover this in a mask of false celebration. Instead, we lift up our grief in hope: the hope of knowing that Christ has come into the world not to condemn the world but to save it; the sure hope that someday God will be all in all, and on that day He will dry every tear, heal every wound, and raise up every mother’s son from the loamy earth of the grave. Here, grief is real. But so is resurrection.

We often forget that the Christmas Story itself is so bittersweet. We’ve romanticized the notion of a young and humble mother giving birth amongst animals in a cave—but that’s really quite horrible, when you think about it. The Holy Family is on the run from the start: forced to register by the Emperor; told that a sword would pierce Mary’s own soul; given myrrh to prophesy her baby’s death; chased into Egypt by the bloody sword of a tyrant who has no qualms about slaughtering innocents to guard his unsteady and ill-gotten throne. Even the Christmas tree, our pillar of hope and joy, points toward that other tree, the glorious and terrible Cross, which was fashioned, they say, from an evergreen.

These early days of Christmas—the second, third, and fourth days—are called the Comites Christi, the fellow-soldiers of Christ, because on them we remember the selfless and sacrificial witness of the martyrs. The second day of Christmas is dedicated to St Stephen, the first Christian murdered for his faith, who was willing to die for Christ and did. On the third day we remember St John the Evangelist, the Disciple Whom Jesus Loved, who was willing to die for Christ yet did not. And today, this fourth day of Christmas, is the Childermas, the commemoration of the Holy Innocents, the young babes of Bethlehem slaughtered in Herod’s desperate attempt on the true King’s life. They represent all those who were not willing to die for Christ, and yet did.

What a world, where tyrants rage and innocents perish! Who can help but think of the poor children of Aleppo, their schools razed to the ground, their hospitals bombed to ash? How could such tragedy ever be set right? Who on earth could fix so broken a world as this? Of course, we already know the answer. And in our grief for innocent blood that cries to Heaven, we place our hope and faith and love in the little Child born in Bethlehem, born to share our sufferings, born to save us all.

Brothers and sisters, if this is a hard season for you—if 2016 has run you ragged and you yearn for new beginnings and new birth—you are not alone. Christ suffers with you. His saints suffer with you. And sure as the turning of the year, sure as the lengthening of days, hope dawns upon our race. We cannot pretend that everything’s all right, that the world is as it should be. But neither can we despair, as though darkness and evil and death will have the final word. They shall not! God forbids it! He has already spoken His final Word, the Word Incarnate in Jesus Christ.

And so this Christmas we have hope. Not a false hope turning a blind eye to brokenness, but the true hope that sets our eyes on Christ. The innocent shall not be forgotten. Your grief won’t have the final say. At the end of the age, all our horrors will descend with us into the grave. And we shall leave them there when we arise in glory, through the mercy of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Merry Christmas, my brothers and sisters. May true joy heal every longing heart.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.