December 28 Feast of the Holy Innocents
1 John 1:5-2:2
Matthew 2:13-18
A. Text/Context
• Scholars call Herod the Great a madman, killing all the children 2 years old and below just to be sure his supposedly future rivals to the throne are all gone even killing his own sons just to be sure he will remain a king
• There are more details in the traditions than in the gospel we just heard. Herod made a carefully laid out plan for the massacre
• He dispatched his soldiers not only to Betlehem but also Jerusalem, Gilgal, and Hebron, and the surrounding borders for a census of the children to be made and the soldiers remained for 9 months in these places
• Parents were fooled that they will be given rewards for bearing children and they were very happy as they traveled to 7 different places for the great occasion
• The boys were wearing festive dress and the infants are still suckling their mother’s breasts wrapped in swaddling clothes
• Upon arrival the husbands are commanded to go home, the mothers left behind and summoned one by one with their infants inside a building
• The children were taken away to a courtyard and they were stabbed in the hearts and slashed in the throats and thrown in a trench
• And so another prophecy was fulfilled from Jeremiah “A voice has been heard in Ramah, great weeping and wailing: Rachel crying for her sons. And she was not willing to be consoled, because they were no more”
• According to Blessed Catherine Anne Emmerich: Towards the middle of Jesus’ second year the Blessed Virgin was told of Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents by an angel appearing to her in Heliopolis in Egypt. Jesus is now 1 and ½ years old and can now run
• She and Joseph were greatly distressed, and the Child Jesus wept that whole day inconsolably
• Elizabeth was also notified by an angel and she hid John the Baptist in the wilderness. According to Blessed Ann 700 infants were killed
B. Human Situation
• Our history is full of stories of infanticide just like what happened to the Jewish children separated from parents and killed during the holocaust
• Our situation today is no different and even more horrible when so many innocent children experience so many kinds of abuse and exploitation
• On the year 2016 the internet was abuzz with a conspiracy theory known as the pizzagate
• Just google it and you will discover a horrendous worldwide network of child abuse, and child trafficking
• According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children there are 800K children who disappeared in the US alone. How about the whole of the world?
• Where do they go? They are used as child laborers, sex slaves, killed for their body organs, and they are offered in the Satanic altars all over the world in secret rituals
• Secret societies in the world are very Satanic and they include our great leaders and politicians
• Even royalties businessmen are all involved in this and they make secret rituals offering children to Satan
• Satan loves to destroy the most holy, the most innocent, the most helpless so as to offend God so greatly
• I do not want to elaborate on this because there has been no large scale investigations because it involves leaders of powerful nations. But I want you to find this out yourselves in your own research
• So the persecution of children does not even begin when they are already born
• They begin inside the womb. According to US Abortion Clock.org there are more than 40 million abortions for this year alone worldwide
• Satan virtually rules this world that it is such an abomination this planet is really shaking of God’s wrath because of what has been done to our children
C. Challenge
• Sins against the holy, the innocents and the helpless are really abominable before God
• And the problems we are facing is so huge in magnitude that sometimes it is impossible to believe we would think this is not happening, but it is so real
• When the enemies are so powerful and so rich and so influential and so highly technological, there is virtually no way to fight against it
• The only way to combat this is to pray. Prayer is the most powerful weapon against evil. Pray for God’s intervention. Pray as you have never done before because God has designs of mercy for the humble and the lowly
• And because Jesus has also told us that prayers can even move mountains, literally. It will not be impossible
• Quite a few number of mystics have revealed that for a very simple prayer hundreds of babies are saved from abortion to occur
• The many sins that we ordinarily do pale in comparison to the sins of those who have already lost themselves to the devil
• Remember the 3rd temptation of Jesus: Worship the devil in return for all the kingdoms of the world and they really worship Satan in rituals and became very rich
• God can even stop a missile from hitting, and it happened many times already in Israel who is surrounded with enemies suspending missiles in the air
• The prayers of the humble and the lowly will compel God to intervene because he set down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly
• We might be insignificant but God will listen to us when we pray and the mighty forces of evil will be shattered
• Even the most formidable enemy will crumble before us because of the prayers of the lowly
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Matthew 2 verse 13-18