Holy Innocents – Martyrs December 28, 2018
Reflection on the WORD
God’s Protective Love: In today’s Gospel, the angel warned Joseph, “Get up, take the Child and His mother and escape into Egypt; Herod Intends to kill the Child”. Reflect on, “How has Godprotected and cared for you, and your loved ones”? Thank the Lord for His Protective and Compassionate Love.
Mt 2:13-16
After the wise men had left, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother with you, and escape into Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him.’ So Joseph got up and, taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt, where he stayed until Herod was dead. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: I called my son out of Egypt.
Herod was furious on realising that he had been fooled by the wise men, and in Bethlehem and its surrounding district he had all the male children killed who were two years old or less, reckoning by the date he had been careful to ask the wise men.
Today's Pointers on God's Word
As you read the passage what words, phases or meanings caught your attention?
- •The angel of the Lord prompted Joseph and Mary to flee from King Herod who went on a jealous, fearful rampage to murder within and around Bethlehem every boy, two years and younger.
- •The slaughter: physical, emotional, social and spiritual of innocent infants continue to escalate to this day through laws that allow the abortion of the unborn baby.
- •Ponder on the truth that human beings exist at the time of conception. Yet, abortion is allowed by laws because they consider immature foetuses though fully human, as non-human. How does the Holy Spirit urge you to value every human life as God’s creation?