The Story of Christmas
Day 14 Reading: Matthew 2:16-18

The word “innocent” from its Latin root means “not wounded.” That’s how we all start life. We’re all innocent. It doesn’t have anything to do with moral right or wrong. It has to do with not being wounded yet. We start unwounded. We start innocent, but the killing of our holy innocence by power and abuse (as in the killing of the Holy Innocents by Herod [Matthew 2:1-23]) is an archetypal image of what eventually happens to all of us.
– Richard Rohr

There was another night in Bethlehem. No angel chorus was heard that evening. No Gloria in excelsis. The air that night was rent with shrieks–shrieks and cries; sobs and tears. A hellish horde had done the bidding–the bidding of a paranoid devil. These thugs search –not for life– but to deal out death. And newborn babes lie bundled in grave cloths–laid to rest–cradled in fresh-turned earth. None to save them; so that the streets of Bethlehem echo– Miserere, miserere!
– James T. Dennison, Jr. in Kerux: The Online Journal of Biblical Theology

End the Madness
by Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia
Hear our cry! Hear our cry!
Death is at the door
Evil is taking the day

Fear makes us crazy
Relief supplies rotting on the docks
Vaccines waiting on shelves
Abortions of convenience
Suicide bombers
Enslavement
Genocide
Warfare

End the madness
Deliver us from bloodshed
Teach us to value every life

Come quickly. Come in power.
Rescue your beloved.
Lord, where else shall we go?

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Click Here for another reflection on this scripture by Steve Garnaas Holmes entitled The Slaughter of the Innocents. Click Here for his reflection entitled Herod.

For information on The Story of Christmas Reading Plan, click here

End the Madness © 2010 Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia
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