They
Cannot Speak, Yet They Bear Witness to Christ
A tiny child is
born, who is the great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to
adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they
tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he
resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself
would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.
Why are you
afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive
you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you
are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show
your cruelty in the death of so many children.
You are not
restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of
their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who
are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you
accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life though you are seeking to
kill Life himself.
Yet your throne is
threatened by the source of grace – so small, yet so great – who is lying in
the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes
freeing souls from captivity to the devil. He has taken up the sons of the enemy
into the ranks of God’s adopted children.
The children die
for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of
martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to
himself. See the kind of kingdom that is his, coming as he did in order to be
this kind of king. See how the deliverer is already working deliverance, the
savior already working salvation.
But you, Herod, do
not know this and are disturbed and furious. While you vent your fury against
the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.
How great a gift
of grace is here! To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of
victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. The cannot use
their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
From a sermon on the Martyrdom of the Holy
Innocents by Saint Quodvultdeus, bishopImage taken from Wikimedia Commons
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