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God is everywhere. His truth and his love pervade all things as the light and the heat of the sun pervade our atmosphere. But...God does not touch our souls with the fire of supernatural
knowledge and experience without Christ.
- Thomas Merton
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1 Jn 1:5-2:2; Ps 124:2-3, 4-5, 7cd-8; Mt 2:13-18 R. Our soul has been rescued like a bird from the fowler's snare.
Had not the LORD been with us?
When men rose up against us,
then would they have swallowed us alive,
When their fury was inflamed against us.
Then would the waters have overwhelmed us;
The torrent would have swept over us;
over us then would have swept the raging waters.
Broken was the snare,
and we were freed.
Our help is in the name of the LORD,
who made heaven and earth. USCCB Lectionary
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This feast is so jarring with its close proximity to Christmas! It mainly leaves me with a ton of questions...
What does it say that the Church commemorates the murder of little boys in Bethlehem and vicinity... and that Jesus got off Scott-free?
What does it say about why the powerful exercise their might through violence to protect their status? It shows how Herod is ruthless, certainly. Who but those feeling threatened by the announcement of a new king would think of killing these innocents?
Would Jesus have experienced survivor's guilt in his youth? I'm sure he would have heard the stories about the massacre of the little boys. How might this have affected him?
Why does the Church have us remember profound grief this close to Christmas? "Rachel weeping for her children..." There seems to be, though, two strong realities to hold together, the essence of paradox. On the one hand is profound suffering and grief. On the other is the promise from God of a new day, a new creation, a new reality characterized by return, blessing, and healing. - by Roc O'Connor S.J.
Creighton Online Ministries
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On Cleaving to God, by St. Albert the Great
. . . nothing can exist or act by its own power unless it acts in the power of God himself, who is the prime mover and the first principle, who is the cause of every action, and the actor in every agent. For so far as the nature of the order of things is concerned, God provides for everything without intermediary right down to the last detail. So nothing, from the greatest to the smallest things, can escape God's eternal providence, or fall away from it, whether in matters of the will, of causal events, or even of accidental circumstances outside of one's control. But God cannot do anything which does not fall under the order of his own providence, just as he cannot do anything which is not subject to its operation.
- Chapter 16. How God's providence includes everything.
Paperback (Kindle edition available)
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