Reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. After the Magi had left, the angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph with his command, Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee into Egypt. Egypt. Stay there until I tell you otherwise. Herod is searching for the child to destroy him.
Joseph got up and took the child and his his mother mother and left that very night for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. Out of Egypt, I have called my son. Once Herod realized that he had been deceived by the astrologers, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys two years old and under in Bethlehem and in its environs, taking his calculations on the basis of the date that he had learned from the astrologers, that is, the Magi.
What was said through Jeremiah the prophet was then fulfilled. A cry was heard at Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation. Rachel, bewailing her children, no comfort for her since they are no more. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit, amen.
This, in my opinion, and I emphasize that, it's a personal point of view, is one of the saddest incidents in the New Testament. And also, in my opinion, one of the most senseless, one of the most absurd and ridiculous things that we find in the revealed word of God. This is not treated as a myth or a legend. This is offered to us as a fact of history. And that Herod, when he came to understand that possibly a king or someone who might be a king and be a threat to his power despotism was born.
He immediately moved to eliminating. Now that isn't anything new. We had something like it only yesterday Afghanistan. But now what is unique, what makes this so purposeless, so senseless, so aimless, is that when he found that he had been frustrated, then he took it out in a kind of revenge and moved in and slaughtered who knows how many young male children. What to accomplish?
Nothing. And it's very easy to say how absurd. If this is the workings of God, if this is an illustration of divine providence, if this is an example of God's love and benevolence for man, then I think I'm much better off without it. That's a perfectly human natural reaction. And let's face it, let's not be afraid to admit it.
Because you see, some of us at some time or other in our lives face exactly this problem. That on the one hand, we commit ourselves to a benevolent, all loving, magnanimous, generous, and infinitely powerful supreme being whom we call God. And it's possible that back of that statement, back of that attitude, there may be many years of faithful adherence to that belief and that conviction or persuasion. They may have been prankful years when we followed quite easily and even happily in the footsteps of our lord and master, Jesus Christ, whom we looked up to. And, of course, we we knew about the crucifixion as a great work of art, something that was very appealing.
But we never thought of ourselves on the cross. And then comes the day or the hour or the moment when all the world seems to be topsy-turvy, when everything that we held to as right and beautiful and good and availing unto salvation, it all seems to have crumbled and is dust and ashes in our mouths. We cannot understand how this could be, how it could happen, how senseless and absurd. And so it seems to us at the time. And we have almost repeat, almost nothing to hang on to because we do have something indeed to hang on to, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ.
Because if you want to see something absurd, if you want to see something senseless and useless, useless, something that you cannot explain, something that helped helped you seem to think irreconcilable with a benevolent, heavenly, loving father, look what happened to his son. And why should we think that we can take up the cross of Jesus Christ and not find it a cross and not find ourselves on it and not find ourselves crying out as Jesus Christ, the son of man and the son of God, crying out, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Christ said that from the cross. He felt abandoned. And he wasn't playing games.
He wasn't putting on an act. He felt abandoned just as much as as you or I would have felt under the same circumstances. Just as much as these mothers of these innocent children who were slaughtered, how could they see any rhyme or reason in what happened to them? And there's probably these lines I just read to you are very famous lines. That these mothers were bewailing and crying out because their children were no more, and how wrong it all seemed or must have seemed to them.
And so with us. Notice the church during this within the octave of Christmas, what it does. The very day after Christmas, we have the feast of Saint Stephen, Martyr. And then the second day, we have the feast of Saint John, Evangelist and Apostle, where the church is confirming and reaffirming our faith in Jesus Christ and in his church. And then today, it's bringing us back again and saying, look, what happened even as Christ was born, the massacre of these innocent young male children.
So the church isn't pulling any punches either. It is just telling us again and again what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. And as I say, at times we certainly do feel that everything is wrong and irrational and senseless and hopeless, almost that. Because that almost means that we can still look up and see Jesus on the cross. And where he is, that's where his brother has a right to be.
And where his brother sometimes finds himself or herself, there, that man or that woman will find their brother, Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.