innocence

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. You can read about it in Matthew's Gospel. The Magi/Wise Men/Three Kings went home 'by another road' rather than returning to Herod to tell him they had found the Child the star foretold. And Herod gave the order to kill all the boy children under 2 in Judea.

Joseph, warned by a dream, took Mary and Jesus to Egypt and Jesus was saved. But others were not.

Innocents is an odd word. Who, after all is innocent? Children, that's who.

We are two weeks removed from the slaughter of the Innocents in Sandy Hook a year ago.

Twenty children--innocent as they could be--died 379 days ago in an elementary school not 40 miles from where I sit typing.

But the horrific thing about the Feast of the Holy Innocents is that every day children die in war and in abuse and by hunger.

Every day should be the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

Children die every day in ways too horrible to imagine and because the world does not care or make a difference or protect them.

I'm going tomorrow to Baltimore to be with my three granddaughters. They are 'innocent'--though sometimes naughty and stubborn. But 'innocent', none the less.

My greatest fear is that something horrible and painful might happen to them.

You have children you love as well as I love Morgan and Emma and Tegan.

Your greatest fear is that something horrible and painful might happen to them.

This feast day is Our Day. We must pray for the innocent ones we know and love...and for all the Holy Innocents around this cruel and dark world who die from violence or want or neglect each day.

This is a solemn day. A day of reflection and pondering. A day dedicated to those least able to defend themselves.

Today is a Holy Day to remember all the innocence in life. Even the innocence we still have, somehow held onto in spite of all we have experienced.

It is a day to hold innocence fiercely near and to ponder how a world would look that took innocence seriously and held it up as the highest value....

Ponder that....