Each baby boy killed that morning over two-thousand years ago in Bethlehem died because he was mistaken for Jesus. The soldiers who killed the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem thought they were killing Christ, or someone who could be Jesus. To the killers, the children were indistinguishable from Christ.
The child-martyrs we call the Holy Innocents are thus a model to us. We are to bear the light of Christ in our lives to such an extent that Jesus will call us "the light of the world" (Mt 5:14). May our lives be conformed to such an astonishing likeness to Jesus (see Rm 8:29, RSV-CE) that the world, in a sense, might confuse us for Christ. This makes us a threat to the world just as Jesus was, and so we risk being persecuted (see 2 Tm 3:12). But "blest are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of slander against you because of" Jesus (Mt 5:11).
"I beg you through the mercy of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God's will, what is good, pleasing and perfect" (Rm 12:1-2). May we, like the Holy Innocents, be "conformed to His death" (Phil 3:10, RNAB) and thus "conform with His glorified body" (Phil 3:21, RNAB). Let us likewise have such childlike innocence that we too are indistinguishable from Jesus.
| PRAYER: | Father, mold me and fashion me into the image of Jesus. |
| PROMISE: | "Our help is in the name of the Lord, Who made heaven and earth." –Ps 124:8 |
| PRAISE: | The deaths of the Holy Innocents were not in vain. In God's mysterious plan, their short lives and tragic deaths continue to bear fruit. |
Reprinted with permission from Presentation Ministries, a lay association of the Catholic Church that focuses on evangelization and discipleship through Bible teaching, daily Mass, the charisms of the Holy Spirit, and Small Christian Community. Their ministries include:
· One Bread, One Body
· Daily Bread Radio Program
· Annual Bible Institute
· Discipleship Retreats
· Guadalupe Bible College