Homily for Feast of Holy Innocents

Homily for the Feast 

of the Holy Innocents

Dec. 28, 2021
Collect
1 John 1:5—2:2
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, New Rochelle

The Collect today contrasts the Innocents’ “not speaking” with their dying.  Surely they did speak, crying in terror and then in pain as they were barbarously slaughtered by Herod’s thugs, and surely their parents howled in anger and anguish.

But our prayer asks that we confess God in faith with both our lips and our lives.  Obviously, we voice our faith—in our common prayer and probably in much private prayer.

St. John makes something of a parallel comment in the 1st reading:  “If we say, ‘We have fellowship with [Jesus],’ while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth” (1 John 1:6).  John challenges us, then, to back up our words, as the Innocents unwittingly did, with our lives, with our actions:  to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

John acknowledges that we fail in that regard.  We are sinners.  He calls on us to confess our sins and thus receive forgiveness.  John’s great insistence is love:  “My little children, love one another.”

And that’s where we tend to fail in community life, e.g., by criticism, by impatience, by lack of consideration, maybe by sulking over something that didn’t go as we wanted.

John encourages us:  Jesus Christ “is faithful and just and will forgive our sins” (1:9).  John encourages us to walk in the light with Christ, to walk in greater love with and for our brothers.