After Holy Innocents

 

Medieval image representing the Great Work

It is called the Work because it is hard and the Great Work, presumably, because the work is constant. This is hard work. Easy work if work at all is having one day of Christmas and celebrating. But the work of, in the modern world, keeping the festival for eight days, examining its many nuances, returning to the altars and the liturgies with new questions, is a work indeed, the work of doing this in a world where no one else really is, that is a work too. The work of digging deep down to find and remember your own power… all of this is work. The work of finding a different joy in Christmas which is not the exact joy of Christmas Day… all of it work.

     The Gospel of Thomas says: Jesus said: He who seeks, let him not cease seeking until he finds; and when he finds he will be troubled, and when he is troubled he will be amazed, and he will reign over the All.

     He does not say, but implies, that when you are troubled you are onto something, and in these days I come a wall and am troubled. It is as if the first round of celebration is over and I must go deeper. The first things are not enough, the first ways of celebrating, of thinking, or hoping and praying are not sufficient. The questions I began to ask but which had no answers are not enough. Some answers are required. Some questions must change. Who is the God of this season? The Little Child, the Holy Child? What does that mean? What good is this Child to me?

     The Child is made by me. Everytime we draw the circle, lift the chalice up and bring it down, place the dagger in the chalice, have the communion cup we are bringing the Child into being. This is an old teaching. All of our magic is the Holy Child, the marriage of our will with the divine will, earth joined to heaven, the presence of God in the midst of our workings. This is the totality of magic. Christmas is the magic moment, the moment when we must see that God is the high priest of this ritual and the world is altar. When I work it, I work in memory of him and under his leadership. When I bring the Holy Child into my world in the seemingly small ways, I am participating in the huge universal way he is doing this himself.

     The Holy Child is also the reminder that this is the beginning of things, the start of the working. When we come to the altar that is the Nativity of things. Be patient. The world is beginning again, but the old world has just passed. We can still smell the brimstone of it. We still remember the deaths. These days of Yule, also called Christmastide, are a constant reminder to renew, to leave the old world behind.

 

It seems that many years we skip over Saint John’s Day, but Holy Innocents is always there, and there at that right time when the cycle of first joy from Christmas is turning into something old, something that makes us sad, something where the holiday’s gloss is gone and promise unfulfilled. Holy Innocents is absolutely about a promise unfulfilled. It is the after story of Epiphany, so to speak. The Wise Men, not being particularly wise, are fooled by Herod and go to Bethlehem to worship Jesus. In the story they are warned in a dream not to go Herod, but they don’t seem to tell Mary and Joseph about this dream. They also seem to have no intuition. Next, Joseph is told by an angel, assumedly Gabriel, to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt. Is this on the same night? Who knows? Was Egypt essential? Was Herod this obsessed with a baby? According to this story he was. He wakes Mary and Jesus, they feel to Egypt with all symbolism. Herod, enraged, kills all the children in Bethlehem two years and under, though it seems like a few three years old would have been bopped off too.

    

Are we to take this story as fact? It’s only in one Gospel. We celebrate Epiphany, though, and it is, after all, in a Gospel, so we sort of have to honor it. Regardless of the factuality of this particular story, the story is true. Innocent, children and otherwise have been killed. The little town of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie, is cursed by the coming of Jesus and experiences a blood bath. The Catholic Church with its love of martyrs, uses its antiphons to spin meaning from the tale, but the truth is this is a story about the failing of God because the people of God fail. The wise men are not wise. Joseph does not think of other children or other women who may be in danger. The Blessed Mother and Jesus whom we turn to for protection and—it seems who often fail in this department—are merely a girl and a baby fleeing the scene of danger.

 

Holy Innocents does demand the question that a few days of Christmas would? What Child is this and of what use is he? By now it’s fair to ask this question. Or, put another way, who is the God of this Feast? Who do we cry out to. The Child cannot help us, not yet, the Child of our longing must be fostered. The mother is just a girl, even she is in no position to help. Who do we cry to? The angelic guardians, older mothers? Wiser fathers? Saint Brigid the burning fostermother of the Lord? Even Hermes/Adonay the shepherd. What of the ox and the ass? Who are these? While we adore the Child in the manger, we look about the manger for those Lord who assist, who are hidden behind words and statues and songs.

 

And so we go deeper.