Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7)

We read extensively from the 1st Letter of John in our lectionary during the Christmas season, reminding us over and over of the love of the  Father for the Son and the need to love one another. The letter was written during a time when gnosticism was strongly influential  in society,  promising that knowledge, especially privileged knowledge, was everything. 

Recently I heard the term  “the knowledge society”. I think it means the knowledge some people have that gives them a way of exercising  power over others in society. Maybe teachers, doctors, accountants, media celebrities. Maybe even priests and bishops and politicians. Anyone who knows something that gives them power over others. Perhaps we all have something that makes us part of that knowledge society. 

John’s letter seems to call out broadly to all possible levels of the “knowledge society” to remember the primacy of love in life.

It’s not how much you know, it’s how much you love and use what you know with love that counts.  For “love is of God.”

Jesus brings life to all, so even at his birth all are there. In today’s reading (Luke 2) Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple where he meets Simeon and Anna, two elderly Jews. In the temple where God dwells, they offer him to his Father.

Luke’s account doesn’t dwell on the ritual – he may not know much about it. He doesn’t write about what the priest does, or even describe much of what Mary and Joseph do. God is at the heart of his story, revealing himself through the Infant to two elderly Jews, Simeon and Anna, who wait patiently for the Messiah.

They’ve waited for years, and they are not alone. Rembrandt with his usual keen insight pictures them waiting in the dark, for they’re part of a great crowd of others in the temple. The long waiting and the darkness has not dulled their eyes. Waiting in the temple has made them sharper, for they see salvation in this little infant, ” a light of revelation to the gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” 

In Luke’s gospel, the destiny of Jesus is revealed in the temple. He begins his journey to the Father there at his birth, and he already draws  those who will accompany him on his journey, beginning with Simeon and Anna, and extending even to the gentile world who will receive his light.

Simeon’s prophecy offers a somber note as he turns to Mary. “Your own soul a sword shall pierce.” The glory of the Lord proclaimed by the angels at Jesus’ birth is not without the experience of sorrow. Mary will join Rachel and the other women who mourned for their innocent children.

We’re living in an aging society; our elderly population is increasing. The temptation is to see old age as a stage in life when all is over, but this gospel story makes us reconsider, doesn’t it? The Lord comes at every moment of life. He draws us to himself our whole life long. “ Old men (and women) ought to be explorers.” Exploring apostles.

Simeon and Anna not only wonder at the child they see and hold in their arms, but they speak about him to those “waiting for the redemption of Israel.” The great crowd waiting in the dark in Rembrandt’s painting represents all of us.

When the magi had departed, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,
“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,
and stay there until I tell you.
Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night
and departed for Egypt.
He stayed there until the death of Herod,
that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,
Out of Egypt I called my son.

When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi,
he became furious.
He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity
two years old and under,
in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi.
Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loud lamentation;
Rachel weeping for her children,
and she would not be consoled,
since they were no more. (Matthew 2, 13-18)

Matthew’s gospel alone describes the massacre of the Innocents and the flight into Egypt.. An angel tells Joseph in a dream to take the Child and his mother into the safety of Egypt to stay till the death of Herod.

Other children born in Bethlehem will not escape the ruler’s cruelty, who orders a massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem two years old and under.

What do we make of this story?. No historical source from the time mentions it, but the massacre isn’t inconceivable. Herod was a powerful ruler, notoriously cruel, especially if his own power was threatened. Fearing a coup, Herod killed his wife and three sons, historians of the time report. His massive fortress, the Herodian, just outside Bethlehem, guarded the southern approaches to his kingdom. There were countless innocent victims of his cruelty, so his massacre of little children is not unlikely.

New Herods still kill the innocent. Just listen to the daily news.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us evil is in our world, seeming to contradict the “great joy that is for you and all the people.” Why does God permit such things?

Joseph, warned in a dream, takes the Child and his mother into Egypt, Matthew says. The Child returns from Egypt unharmed, but later Jesus will stand innocent before Pontius Pilate who condemns him to a cruel death. Then, he rises from the dead, promising life to those who share in a death like his.

Our feast today sees the children of Bethlehem sharing in his resurrection, safe in God’s hands. Evil does not have the last word.

“Clothed in white robes, they will walk with me, says the Lord, for they are worthy.” (Antiphon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents)

Matthew’s story was directed, first of all, to Jewish Christians living after Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD,, when thousands of innocent people were killed by a massive Roman army. Why did God permit this? Where is the kingdom Jesus Christ promised, they must have asked? We ask this too.

Evil doesn’t triumph, though it strides the world seemingly unopposed, but God saves the weak, the small, the helpless through Jesus, his Son. Matthew’s story of the Magi promises God ‘s kingdom will come to all.

Still, Matthew recognizes those experiencing the suffering of the innocent.. He hears the sobbing and the loud lamentation: “Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.”

“She would not be consoled, since they were no more.”

Tomorrow, we return to Luke’s Gospel to hear Simeon prophesy to Mary that a sword will pierce here heart. In the painting below she looks at her Child wondering what will happen to him.

For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

The Feast of the Holy Family, first celebrated by the church in Canada, became a feast in the Christmas season of the universal church in 1920. The First World War had brought about a massive dislocation in family life all over the world. Like the Family in Matthew’s Gospel today, families were trying to escape violence, keep together and bring up children. The church placed this feast in her calendar to aid families challenged by war.

“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him,” the angel says to Joseph. There’s a promise to every family in God’s promise to Joseph. It’s a promise so many immigrant families displaced by wars, political situations, climate change, need to hear now. God cares for them. Think of families in Ukraine and some war-torn parts of Africa, families on our southern borders escaping political instability. 

The Family of this feast is not a model of a perfect family, safe in secure Nazareth, but an embattled family trying to find its way. It’s a model for embattled families today. 

The Feast of the Holy Family also offers a promise young people in our society, afraid to get married and have children, need to hear. Don’t be afraid of the commitment that is marriage and the children that come to you. God will see you through.

Finally, it’s a promise we all must work to see fulfilled as much as we can.

More than we realize, feasts and seasons alert us to real situations in life. They are graces from God. We need to pay more attention to the feasts we celebrate on our church calendar.

“For people are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year – in fact, forever. The church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature” (Pius X.Encyclical Quas primas, 11 December 1925).”