The Holy Innocents, commemorating the First Sunday after Christmas '25

The Gospel lesson for Holy Innocents centers on the Lord’s response to a lament centuries in the making. Matthew’s account of Herod’s slaughter of the children concludes with Jeremiah’s words: “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” To grasp its force, we must return to Genesis.  

Rachel was Jacob’s chosen wife, the younger daughter of Laban. Yet through Laban’s deception, Jacob was first made to marry her sister Leah. Leah knew, however, that she was not Jacob’s choice, and so she strove to please Jacob with children. As she cried out to God, her sorrow was met with divine compassion: “When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.” Leah would bear six of Jacob’s twelve sons. Rachel, by contrast, carried the anguish of being Jacob’s chosen, yet suffered infertility. Her desperation drove her to cry out, “Give me children or I shall die!” As with Sarah two generations earlier, Rachel sought to give Jacob children through her bondservants–a decision that would deepen future divisions among Jacob’s sons. At last, Rachel bore Joseph. But while giving birth to her second, she died in childbirth. Rachel was buried near the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, her tomb standing for centuries as a silent witness. 

By the prophet Jeremiah’s time, the tribes descended from Jacob had suffered generations of conflict and invasion. Only Judah remained, and it was steeped in idolatry and failed kingship. Yet the Lord continued to have mercy and spare them destruction. Their corruption accomplished its worst, though, in the Valley of Hinnom just outside of Jerusalem, where residents of the city sacrificed their children to the Canaanite deity, Molech. For this evil, even the land was cursed and judgment pronounced. Babylon soon came, and their invasion commenced, fittingly, by carting off Jerusalem’s noble young people into exile as a ransom. Before their march north, they were gathered at Ramah, near the crossroads overlooking Rachel’s ancient tomb. Once more, Rachel wept for her children. 

Yet her lament was stifled—this time by conniving kings and false prophets, who insisted that all was well in Jerusalem, despite these things, declaring peace where there was none. Yet the losses could no longer be denied. From beginning to end, Rachel’s grief marked Israel’s story. In the centuries that followed, moreover, little suggested that her children would ever be gathered again. Though some of the youths returned from the exile (by that time having aged decades) something always remained unconsoled. Even amid the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah and the victories of Judas Maccabaeus, Jerusalem was still a fractured place. Many, however, remained scattered abroad. Rachel still wept for her children. 

By the time of Christ, King Herod had done what seemed impossible—he had reconstituted Judah and gained the sanction of Caesar to rule over it and to restore what he saw as its former glory. So he built up its Temple and palaces, enhanced its trade, eliminated dissidents, and curried imperial support for a thriving culture and economy. It was just about perfect, as long as you kept your eyes on the big picture, as long as you didn’t think too much about Rachel’s tomb when you passed by on the way up to Jerusalem. Children, however, have a way of complicating the neat schemes of politics, economics, and culture. The birth of Christ was no exception, and shook to the core Herod’s carefully-curated identity as Israel’s deliverer and redeemer. And so he faced a terrible question: what were a few souls compared to the stability of his great kingdom? As Abp. Haverland has observed, Herod’s logic makes perfect worldly sense. It resonates with the logic of Caiaphas later in the Gospel; Herod saw that it was expedient to carry out a horrific but limited act of violence if it would spare the many the distraction of a messianic hope, the kind of hope that had led to unrest and damaged rapport with Rome. We often miss the actual scope and meaning of Herod’s order. We forget just how near all these things are to each other. Bethlehem was only a few miles away from Jerusalem. In our terms, it would be as though we decided that for the greatness of Newport Beach, five percent of the youngest population of Costa Mesa would have to die. There is no way people would not be aware; everyone would have to live with the knowledge of it. And so Rachel had to weep for her children again. Her losses through childbirth, idolatry, exile, and now murder—her lament gathered together the brokenness of God’s chosen.  

And this is the beginning of the Gospel, the beginning of God’s answer and consolation. Unlike virtually everyone else, our Lord does not suppress the reality of Rachel’s lament—He hears her cry and makes it part of the story of His redemption. What unfolds through Him is the healing of that grievous loss. We can see the horizon of this healing extended in the imagery of Revelation, which serves as the Epistle: the redeemed of Israel and the Church gathered around Christ. We do not receive in this a neat explanation to rationalize the centuries of sorrow, rather we see in the vision the truth that not one of Rachel’s children has ever been forgotten, that they have been carefully found again and brought back again by the One who wipes away every tear from every eye. And, what is more, He has made them the icon of inheriting the Kingdom. 

Holy Innocents provides no easy or comforting answers to an atrocity. Instead, we are invited to meditate on one of the worst moments in salvation history through the vision of Christ. Christmas cannot be reduced to mere sentiment, warmed over altruism. The world hates anything that looks like Christ, and before there can be peace on earth, and good will towards men, we must be redeemed from captivity to Satan, sin, and death. Many mothers wept in Bethlehem, just as our Lady would be made to weep for her Son in time, as well. Even at Christmas, we cannot forget Christ’s eventual Passion. The world does not receive Jesus; the spirit of Herod is the spirit of antichrist. One of the ways we know it is by its hatred of children, a demonic hatred that will be with us to the end of the age. Rather than reveal its full and awful aspect, though, that spirit will always tempt us with expedience and the so-called bigger picture, which rationalizes horrors in the name of stability and progress. But as Christians, we cannot ever assent to these temptations, and the holy innocents teach us that innocence of life will always triumph over the addiction to violence and death at the heart of all worldly schemes.  

Today, the Gospel teaches us that the murder of innocents is objectively evil, but always lingers as an option we will consider, which is precisely why we need our Lord to save us. It is not just a problem of some distant past. It is an ugliness possible for all of us, even as the beauty of salvation is open freely to us. Today is a sobering reminder of what we are capable of in the pursuit of our idea of the greater good. It is a reminder that we have a problem from the heart from which we really do need to be saved. But it is also that Christ was born to do precisely this–He is not ignorant of the horrors among which He is born, the awaiting Cross that was present before He was even old enough to walk. Today, the Church calls us to observe sorrow in the midst of joy and joy within our sorrow on this day—in this way we are conformed to the reality of life in the Kingdom as it strives for the salvation of many within a world that rejects it. As we profess in the Creed: “for us men, and for our salvation, He came down from heaven.”