Rm Agustinus Sutiono O.Carm
Today we celebrates the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Mostly below the age of two years old, those young children and infants were victims of the greed and ego of King Herod the Great. This was done because he was afraid of the threat that the newborn ‘King of the Jews’ prophesied by the prophets and messengers of God presented against him and his rule. Trying to find ways to prevent this newborn King from overcoming his and his family’s rule, he desperately launched that massacre against his own people. What an egoism! What a paranoid! His love for power and ambition to sovereign took away his mind. His tittle, Herod the great iself showed how he was a megalomaniac, meaning someone who has obsession with the exercise of power, or someone with delusional belief that he is important, powerful or famous. It is a form of mental disorder.
Why is it that God permitted such atrocities to happen such as what happened in the massacre of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, as well as in many other dark moments in our human history? Some of us certainly would have criticised the Lord, thinking that God could have intervened and stopped all those atrocities and evils from happening. But this is where we have to understand and realise that God has given us the free will and the freedom to choose our course of action in life. The many sufferings that we often suffer from and encounter in this world, they all came from our abuse of our privileges, freedom and choices, as instead of choosing the better and righteous path, we often chose the path of pleasure and corruption, allowing sin and the temptations for it to mislead us down this path of destruction and ruin.
To commemorate this Feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, we are reminded to be vigilant so that we do not easily end up falling into the temptations to sin and to give in to our fears, our desires and ambitions, our pursuits for worldly glory and renown, just as King Herod had experienced. May the Lord continue to help us to remain firmly focused on Him, and to be truly committed to a life of virtue and compassionate care for others as we continue to progress through this joyful season of Christmas, and share our Christmas joy to everyone around us, resisting the temptations of pleasure and hedonism, and striving instead to seek the true heavenly treasure that can be found in God alone. Amen.