The Nightmare of Christmas

"When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men." Matthew 2:16

Bloody Christmas. When we think about Christmas, we rarely recall passages such as these. To many of us, Christmas brought back sweet childhood memories, about wishful dreams of "peace on earth among all people, and glory to God in the highest." We wear the Christmas colors of red and green, but we wouldn't make any connection between the Christmas red with the bloody red of the infants and babies were massacred at the first Christmas. In Hollywood, Tim Burton dreamed of "The Nightmare before Christmas"; but in biblical reality, there was a "Nightmare after Christmas"! How could we justify something as evil as this slaughtering of children during the wonderful time of Christmas? Innocent kids died because of the Lord of Life? Terror reigned when the King of Peace arrive? The Almighty fled and escaped with His life? Welcome to our real world, oh God Almighty. Incarnation, the Word became Flesh: this is no walk in the park. This is where evil lurked deceitfully around every corner. ("Oh yes, seek Him and report to me when you have found Him, so that I may worship Him too", Herod said). The rules of engagement don't applied here. Trust no one, we have been told. People who claim to be your friends would betray you... You know all this, and yet you still decided to come anyway? To bring Christmas into the land of ghoulies like us? Wow! That must be some love! So now, what is it that we should do? To walk in your footstep of love incarnated is too accept humiliation, to get dirty in the evil world, to look beyond the temporal setback, and to trust in God beyond any man or manmade circumstances. The “full implications of the Incarnation” is not “comprehended” until the doctrine is both affirmed and lived out, both believed and expressed, everyday in our daily life. [1] Lord Jesus, my God who enfleshed to be in this world; thank you for your love and your willingness to become one of us, so that you can show us how to be more like you, even in the midst of the evil world we are in. Help us to be willing to follow you in love, even loving through pain and suffering; help us to follow you in faith, and trust God who designed the master plan...

"Think of the Lord's birth, wherein the Word became Flesh, not as a past even which we recall, but as a present reality upon which we gaze." St. Leo, AD 440 [2]