Today is the feast of The Holy Innocents, we recall the first Martyrs for Christ Jesus.
What caused the shedding of blood of these innocent children? Was it not to hold on to power and honour? Afraid that riches and wealth will be lost? The want and need to live a certain lifestyle without compromise or sacrifice? To live for oneself forsaking all others. In this day and age in which the Holy Innocents are still being martyed is through Abortion! This is what it means to live in the shadow of darkness. Soon it will envelop our whole being and death is upon us.
Jesus Christ our Lord and light of all nations had come to take away the darkness of sin in our lives. Let us turn to Him so that we can live sanctified life giving lives in and through Him. Amen
First reading
1 John 1:5-2:2
This is what we have heard from Jesus Christ, and the message that we are announcing to you:
God is light; there is no darkness in him at all.
If we say that we are in union with God while we are living in darkness, we are lying because we are not living the truth.
But if we live our lives in the light, as he is in the light,
we are in union with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we say we have no sin in us, we are deceiving ourselves and refusing to admit the truth;
but if we acknowledge our sins, then God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and purify us from everything that is wrong.
To say that we have never sinned is to call God a liar
and to show that his word is not in us.
I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning;
but if anyone should sin,
we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s.
Gospel
Matthew 2:13-18
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 when he realised that he had been outwitted by the wise men, and in Bethlehem and its surrounding district he had all the male children killed who were two years old or under, reckoning by the date he had been careful to ask the wise men. It was then that the words spoken through the prophet Jeremiah were fulfilled:
A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loudly lamenting: it was Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted because they were no more.
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