01/01/2026
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HEROD THE KING, IN HIS RAGING
Sunday after the Nativity of Christ / Feast of the Holy Innocents, December 29, 2024
Galatians 1:11-19; Matthew 2:13-23
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
On the twenty-ninth of December we come together for the feast of the Holy Innocents. The Gospel reading concerning them is read on their feast but also on the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ, and this year, both those commemorations happen on the same day.
Hear again a portion of this Gospel reading: “Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region, who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.’”
It was for this reason that St. Joseph the Betrothed, whose relic we have inside our holy altar, took the child Jesus and His mother the Theotokos into Egypt, to escape the horror of the slaughter of, as tradition tells us, some 14,000 young boys, all aged two and under.
It is an unthinkable act for us who live in this time and place, but such massacres were common in the ancient world, a time when demons still ruled the earth, a time before, as the Virgin Mary said, Christ would “cast down the mighty from their thrones.”
The whole Christian world sings carols around Christmas, which has of course just begun and will continue for the Orthodox through December 31, which is the leave-taking of the feast. Most Christmas carols are joyful and hopeful, singing with the angels to the shepherds of the peace and goodwill being brought to us who live on earth, heralding the end of that demonic rule and the beginning of the rule of Christ and His saints, in which all power in heaven and earth has been given back to Christ and delegated to His holy ones.
But there is one far-famed carol in the English language which is not joyful. The earliest publication of its text is in 1534, and the oldest known setting of the music was written down in 1591. So we have been singing it for close to 500 years now.
The carol was part of what were called “mystery plays,” live performances largely of Bible stories that were common in medieval and Renaissance Europe. The particular play that includes this carol is titled “The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors,” which may stretch back to the late fourteenth century, and it was performed in the city of Coventry in the West Midlands, right in the center of England. The play covers the events from the Annunciation, Christ’s conception, through the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.
Toward the end of the play, three mothers of Bethlehem, wailing in their grief, step onto the stage and sing what has come down to us under the name “The Coventry Carol,” a song that is a kind of lullaby, but sung to their dead children.
We have probably all heard this carol, but perhaps you have never listened to the lyrics. So here they are:
Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child
Bye bye, lully, lullay
O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay”?
Herod the king, in his raging
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay
That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”
It may seem strange to include this note of darkness in this season of light, but here in this life there is no joy which is unmingled with grief. Even our radiant joy at Pascha is in the shadow of the Cross.
In this time especially, we can lift up our lamentation for those everywhere in the world who are being massacred for the sake of the raging of rulers and the anger and the greed of the nations.
But even though our country here is at peace, this lamentation, the voice of Rachel weeping in Ramah for her children, must be lifted up particularly on this day for the sake of the tens of millions of young children who have been killed in the wombs of their mothers.
There are so many reasons that this happens now, so many painful and horrifying and impossible situations, but whatever the causes or the reasoning, the death of the innocents remains. And it remains with us here in the twenty-first century, even when bloodthirsty paganism and empires no longer rule the earth.
Today is a good day to say very clearly that the Orthodox Church rejects elective abortion and has done so on record for 2,000 years, because the life of even one little child is worth more than the whole earth, because that child is stamped with the stamp of the God Who made that child according to His own Image, which is Christ, and because the Image of the invisible God, Who is Christ, became a child in the womb of a mother.
Jesus Christ was born that they might live, and so we have no right to take their lives – no matter the reasoning, no matter the rationale, no matter the hardship. There are so many people ready to care for every one of those children that there is no need to abort them. Do not believe the lie that no pro-life person cares about taking care of children after they are born – that is abundantly and blatantly false, and numerous resources for mothers in crisis are just a phone call or an Internet search away.
More than that, though, we Christians have a duty to those mothers who feel this tension. We have a duty to them and to their children. If we ignore them, if we abandon them, if we do not support them and love them, then we are indirectly guilty should they make that fateful choice for abortion. To know good that we can do and not to do it is a sin.
Christ was born that they might live, and even if they are abandoned by all mankind, He Himself will raise them up at the Last Day among the ever-living, and justice will be brought to earth. The oppressor will be judged and cast down, and the oppressed will be vindicated and raised up. When He was born, the Innocents were slaughtered for His sake, and He Himself has been slaughtered for their sake to raise them up with Himself out of the grave.
So today, as we celebrate this solemn feast, let us remember the innocent. Let us mourn for those who are lost. And let us extend our hands to those who are fallen. Because that is what Christ has done for us.
To Him, therefore, with His Father and Holy Spirit, be all glory, honor, and worship, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. Christ is born! Glorify Him!
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Here is a lovely modern arrangement of the carol: https://youtu.be/Wit-jGD4wCw
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