Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The slaughter of the young boys of Bethlehem is especially difficult for a father to contemplate I have two boys two years old and under. Two of mine would have been massacred under Herod’s order.

But it seems to me today that this feast is about Hope. Just four days ago we celebrated the birth of Hope, the Radiant Dawn, the King of Nations, Emmanuel. However, Hope requires something of us. While our Hope truly is a gift from our Heavenly Father, it is one that requires a response from us and our participation to grow and bear fruit in our lives. A few weeks ago I wrote about Fr. Doran’s homily on the First Sunday of Advent, when he spoke about the silence of God and our need to nurture and cultivate our Hope.

On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Fr. Doran spoke to us about the Homily of Pope Benedict XVI on the Immaculate Conception, which was very fitting because these two Solemnities had the same Gospel reading. These two paragraphs from Holy Father struck me with particular force:

The human being lives in the suspicion that God's love creates a dependence and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God.

He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God's level, and to overcome death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death.

Linking these various threads together: the Nativity, Herod’s slaughter of innocents, the necessity to cultivate Hope and the mistrust of God in preference to personal power, we can see what this day teaches about Hope. Herod’s response to the Hope offered by Christ is to exercise his own personal power in a terrifying way. By his horrifying response, Herod teaches us that hope and power are opposites. Trust is the proper response to Hope. Trust is the activity of cultivating Hope, and in trusting we abandon ourselves and we give our lives over to Another, and this is the activity that bring us to the Cross.

One Other Thing…..about today. It is good in these times when illegal immigration is so much discussed and poor families have become the object of so much contempt for daring to seek some method of providing for themselves in America that we remember that the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt were uninvited by their hosts, were poor and without a means to support themselves, and were fugitives from the justice of Herod, the legitimate ruler of Judea. How much better it would be if we saw in every illegal immigrant the reflection of the Holy Family.

Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum

Advent continues to be difficult, but of course God also continues to supply the means necessary to get through it. Yesterday, the 2nd car broke down and won’t run. We now have 2 cars which are not running. When I called my mother to ask if I might borrow her 2nd car for a couple of days, I learned that her 2nd car is also not running. O, the joys of Advent. I think that God uses Advent to trim away my pride, and to curtail my personal power, so that I will become ever more dependent on Him—or at least realize the extent to which I am dependent on Him already. I expect that by the 23rd I will be begging fot Christ to come ever more quickly. Indeed, although we pray for the second coming every time we pray the Our Father, I rarely do it consciously. But this past weekend I found myself actually praying with intensity that God would bring the final judgment and put an end to the world of sin, especially my sin.

We had a great homily at mass yesterday, and then when I got home I prayed the Office of Readings, which contained a reading from a homily by St. Augustine. Both of them spoke of the difference between the voice of John the Baptist, and the Word that both preceded and outlasted him. Both the homilist at Holy Ghost and St. Augustine spoke about how the voice fades away, but the Word is everlasting. St. Augustine went on to talking about his own experience of sharing the Word, and spreading the faith to others. He says:

In my search for a way to let this message reach you, so that the word already in my heart may find place also in yours, I use my voice to speak to you. The sound of my voice brings the meaning of the word to you and then passes away. The word which the sound has brought to you is now in your heart, and yet it is still also in mine.

When the word has been conveyed to you, does not the sound seem to say: The word ought to grow, and I should diminish? The sound of the voice has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying: My joy is complete. Let us hold on to the word; we must not lose the word conceived inwardly in our hearts.Do you need proof that the voice passes away but the divine Word remains? Where is John’s baptism today? It served its purpose, and it went away. Now it is Christ’s baptism that we celebrate. It is in Christ that we all believe; we hope for salvation in him. This is the message the voice cried out.

So it goes with me and Advent. I must follow John who says “He must increase; I must decrease”

Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum

On the way home from work in the afternoon I usually listen to the Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman show on KHOW radio. They have an interesting show, Craig Silverman is a prominent Democrat and former Denver DA, and Dan Caplis is a prominent republican trial lawyer and although he has never held public office he is well known in the Denver media. He is married to a former local television news anchor. The show is delightful because, although Craig and Dan disagree with one another on a great number of issues, they are always polite cordial and friendly in their disagreements. What makes the show even more interesting is that Dan Caplis is also one of the more prominent public Catholics in the City, and Craig Silverman is Jewish. Yesterday they had an interesting topic on their program: whether or not we should wish people a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, when we don’t know their religion. Dan of course thought that wishing people a Merry Christmas was a good thing. Craig, although not offended by the phrase Merry Christmas, thought we ought to be a little more thoughtful of others and show more respect for their beliefs. This difference was to be expected. However, what was not to be expected was Dan Caplis’ rather lackluster defense of the practice of wishing people a Merry Christmas.

So many callers were afraid of Christian proselytism, and they were also afraid of denying the significant celebrations of other traditions like Chanukah and Solstice. Dan did not confront these issues head on, and he should have. Wishing people a Merry Christmas is an evangelical activity, its function is to celebrate and broadcast the Good News that the Savior was born. As Christians we are commissioned by the Lord to spread the Gospel. One way we do this is by a continual invitation to the rest of the world to share our celebration of Christmas, and the joy we have at the birth of Christ. Wishing people a Merry Christmas really and truly ought to be oriented toward the conversion of all people to Christ, for this is what is best for them. Dan should have talked about this. If this was a source of stress in his relationship with Craig, whom he calls his “brother from another mother”, he should have reflected on the words of the Lord, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man 'against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's enemies will be those of his household’.”

Dan should also have been able to articulate a Christian response when Craig brought up the other holidays of the season, Chanukah and Solstice, which he said were older than the celebration of Christmas, and were not about Christ. This is not true. While both of these holidays were celebrated prior to the birth of Christ, the birth of Christ is ontologically prior to both of them. This is illustrated by the fact that both of these point towards the revelation of Jesus, the name above every other name. Let’s look to Chanukah first. Chanukah is the celebration of a miracle at the rededication of the Temple after it had been defiled by Hellenists. The Jews had only enough oil to burn only one day, but it lasted eight days, the time needed to procure more oil. Now this would seem to have little to do with Christ. However, all we need to remember that Christ is the temple, and then we begin to see a connection. But the real connection to Christ is in the miracle of eight days. The fact that the Chanukah miracle lasted eicght days shows that it points towards Christ. Any time we see the number eight, especially in scripture and tradition, we should pause and think of Christ. It is not for nothing that the solemnities of Christmas and Easter are proclaimed for an Octave, for eight days. Eight is the number of the fullness of creation and the number of days in the Christian week. The week at the center of the universe, the week that gives meaning to time itself, is Holy Week. And this week runs eight days, from Palm Sunday to Easter. Ancient and venerable tradition tells us that on Easter Sunday, the eighth day, Christ finished the work of creation, for in His death and Resurrection all things were made new. For this reason the number eight has long been associated with baptism and regeneration. It is an ancient tradition for baptisteries to have eight sides, and the reason why God would have given the Jews an miracle centered on eight days, so that they would recognize the True Light when He Rose on the eighth day.

Like Christmas and Chanukah, the Winter Solstice is also a festival of light. God designed the world to have signs and meanings that would point towards Christ. From the very beginning God appointed the Winter solstice to point towards and remind us of Christ who is the victory of light over darkness. The Pagan celebration of the coming of longer days and the victory of light, points to Christmas. When they say the Christians copied them by placing Christmas on the Solstice, they have it precisely wrong. God made the Solstice a sign of Christ, in whom creation was perfected.