![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/599\/2012\/12\/Mother-and-CHild-Montegna-e1356289187186.jpg\" "\\"Mother")
<\/a>The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<\/em><\/p>\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned . . . .<\/em><\/p>\n by William Butler Yeats,<\/em><\/p>\n from The Second Coming<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n A tide of small bodies riddled with bullets stopped our world, arrested our attention, and held us, for a week, in a reality we cannot bear: \u00a0that this is the world we live in, \u00a0this is really who we are.<\/p>\n Shooter, victims, murdered mother, shattered families, wounded town, madness making its way so easily past the mask of goodness we have constructed, and into the heart of our peace. \u00a0All of it is part of who we are.<\/p>\n The next step,\u00a0one we always take, begins our walk away from this reality, our walk into a delusion we think will be a way out:\u00a0 turning the story into good guys\/bad guys, into a shoot-em-up\/lock-em-up, in which we tell ourselves it isn\u2019t us after all: \u00a0it\u2019s them.\u00a0 And we\u00a0 can control them.<\/p>\n Apocalyse the Experience, which is what we have just been through, is never the end of everything, but always the end of something very precious.\u00a0\u00a0 It is an event that we cannot forget.\u00a0 The world, in our knowing of it, moves devastatingly from utopian to dystopian.\u00a0 Survivors wander through the wreckage.\u00a0 Time ends.\u00a0 The hours no longer can be counted in the same way.\u00a0 New time begins.<\/p>\n This is the truth about apocalypse, which is the setting for Advent, in the readings assigned for the entire season.\u00a0 Then as now, the change is not predictable by any calendar.\u00a0 \u00a0It has no vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end.\u00a0 But it has played out for centuries, in the Holocaust, in pogroms, in caste, race\u00a0and religion wars in every region and\u00a0nation, in witch hunts; in My Lai, in Afghanistan, in Hiroshima and the Gaza.<\/p>\n These killings happen in Bethlehem.\u00a0 And they happen here and now, in Newtown.\u00a0 And they have happened in every age.\u00a0 Madness, mayhem, paranoia, zero sum thinking: \u00a0these are part of our humanness.\u00a0 But they are not all<\/em> that we are.<\/p>\n Here is Matthews\u2019s tale (2: 13-23):<\/p>\n An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, \u201cGet up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.\u201d \u00a0<\/em>Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night and fled.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 <\/sup><\/em>Herod . . . . infuriated, \u00a0sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.\u00a0 <\/em>Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:\u00a0 <\/em>\u201cA voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The story tells us that our salvation is born in the midst of such times, into the heart of our darkness, in a\u00a0moment when time is shattered and new time begins.<\/p>\n And our salvation is brought to us by a survivor of the worst that can befall, by a child whose light was not extinguished, a child who understands deeply what has happened, a child who remembers, a child who was not killed.\u00a0 This<\/em> is the Child who grows in wisdom and stature, who amazes the rabbis in the temple, who has a perspective unlike anyone\u2019s.<\/p>\n The story tells us that the people of Bethlehem were barely aware of this Child.\u00a0 Devastated by the slaughter,\u00a0picking up their splintered lives, their broken hearts, their stabbing fears, their traumatized surviving children, they also found among the wreckage the words that promise the Messiah will be born to them, especially to them.\u00a0 They carried this promise, in tears, as they buried their dead children.<\/p>\n The story tells us that God does not abandon us to face our peril alone.\u00a0 That God drew Mary and Joseph to this place and this time for this birth.\u00a0 We tend to think the slaughter was later, after the birth and after the flight, but it is possible that the time frame here is very short, that the star brought the kings\u00a0to the moment of birth, that Herod\u2019s angry order was given impatiently early, that the rumors of murder were rife in the streets as Mary lay down in the straw.\u00a0\u00a0 It is possible that the carnage was beginning even as she gave birth.\u00a0 And so it is possible to say that she gave birth among the slaughtered.<\/p>\n May we remember that Christmas comes to meet our desperate need.\u00a0 God with<\/em> us is the theme.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Never we know but in sleet and in snow,<\/em><\/p>\n The place where the great fires are,<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth<\/p>\n And the heart of the earth a star.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n And at night we win to the ancient inn<\/p>\n Where the child in the frost is furled,<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n We follow the feet where all souls meet <\/em><\/p>\n At the inn at the end of the world.<\/p>\n The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n For the flame of the sun is flown, <\/em><\/p>\n The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold, <\/em><\/p>\n And a Child comes forth alone. <\/em><\/p>\n \u2013 G.K. Chesterton, from A Child of the Snows<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n ________________________________________________<\/p>\n Illustrations:<\/p>\n 1.Mary with the Infant Jesus. by Andrea Mantegna. 1455.\u00a0Gem\u00e4ldegalerie (Berlin, Germany)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>The Slaughter of the Innocents is a part of the story of Bethlehem, and the birth of Christ.\u00a0 These killings, into which Jesus is born, are akin to the Newtown school shootings \u2014 very young children, birth to age 2, are killed, and by military assault weapons, in fact, by soldiers who burst in like madmen.\u00a0 This tale is akin to all the massacres we have borne these past decades:\u00a0 Columbine, the Aurora\u00a0Colorado movie theatre, Virginia Tech, the mall shooting, the neo-Nazi at the Capitol, the psychiatrist at Fort Hood.\u00a0 The aftermath is terrible.<\/p>\n<\/a>The story tells us that the Christ child was born into bedlam, mayhem, the madness which is our world.\u00a0 The Child was born because, pervasive as this reality about us is, it is not all<\/em> we are.\u00a0 The story was written to give us hope.<\/p>\n<\/a>The hope of our\u00a0time lives among survivors.\u00a0 We cannot outrun, outgun, or outwit what is monstrous in this world.\u00a0 But in facing the truth of our reality, we can see light in its darkness, and hear angels singing there, for it is into this reality that Christmas comes.<\/p>\n