Bruised Once More ‘Gainst the Wood of the Cross

They scarcely waked before they slept,
They scarcely wept before they laughed;
They drank indeed death’s bitter draught,
But all its bitterest dregs were kept
And drained by Mothers while they wept.

— Christina Rossetti

I’ve been at this Cradle Catholic gig for nearly 35 years, so you’d think I’d have learned a thing or two by now. But no; it’s happened again, as it has every year for as long as I can remember.

I’ve been surprised by the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

This month’s tragic events put the suffering of innocents front-and-center. Yet the arrival of the latest bundle of Susanka joy (and mine own innate tendency to think of human suffering as little as humanly possible) renders this year’s feast even more jarring to me than it has been in the past.

What a strange duality dogs our Catholic footsteps. No sooner do we begin the celebration of one of the most joyous events of our past than we are brought hard-up against one of the most emotionally devastating events in all of Salvation History: an event that I find myself (grudgingly) accepting intellectually, but which remains as emotionally difficult as ever.

And the cyclical nature of the liturgical year means that I find myself in this conflicted state not once, or twice, but over and over and over again. It’s almost as though the Church is engaging in a brutal game of “psych,” holding out the joys of Christmas each year only to slap me down with the death of thousands of young babes as soon as I draw near.

Time and again, I reach out to cradle the Christ Child in His manger only to bruise myself against the wood of the Cross — a reality that lies always just beneath the surface of human existence.

Over at the Word on Fire blog, Father Steve Grunow’s Coventry Carol-themed reflection captures the day’s conflicting sentiments in a phrase: “Shadows lurked beneath the light of the star of Bethlehem.”

I can’t imagine a day when I will find myself comfortable with those shadows. But that’s not really why the Church reminds me of their existence, is it?

Attribution(s): “Linnocence” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau via Illusion Gallery and licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons; “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” by Luc-Olivier Merson, licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.