Saint John, the Innocents, Saint Anne the Hag and the Business of Remaking the World

 By the light, by the light, by the light of Saint John the Beloved, may we truly see.

ENTRANCE ANTIPHON           Wis 18: 14-15

Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia, et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet, omnipotens sermo tuus, Domine, de caelis a regalibus sedibus venit.

When a profound silence covered all things

and night was in the middle of its course,

your all-powerful Word, O Lord,

bounded from heaven's royal throne.

I woke up in a bad way. After the reasonable gloom of Holy Innocents, we return to the Feast of Saint John, but something has happened and I’m going to remember it in the future because it always happens with Octaves. After the third day, the energy peters off. It seems as if an Octave should really occur in three phases, two three days and the last three days each going into something new.

 

But I’ve talked a little about that and today I thought how low we are on imagination. The Gospels, our theology, our legends, were spurred by imagination as what our childhood faith. Presumable many of us had imaginations, but then these were crushed out, often by religious authorities. What is needed is a reclamation of the religious imagination. I am thinking of the story of the Holy Innocents. What if we were to reclaim it? What if we were to retell it. Not untell it, for the telling has a great meaning, to retell it, fill in holes, make it right? Doing this in the modern day is doing what our ancestors did for centuries in a faith that was far more vivid than the one we live in. The Gospel writers who told the Gospel their own way, who saw their own face of Christ, the theologians and folktellers who shaped the stories we know, knew also, better than we, the meaning of “God putting such power into the hands of men.”

 

Imagine another story. Imagine that the Wise Men really are wise and they don’t need visions and dreams to know to leave a different way. They already understand the wickedness of Herod. They didn’t know much about the Roman Empire, and Herod, knowing these were Parthians and powerful men didn’t have the nerve to shadow them to closely.

 

Joseph’s wisdom may be attributed to angels in dreams, but this time the dreaming messengers are the Magi who tell Joseph he must flee. Joseph waits a day. So much to pack. The angel confirms his fears. Consumed by fear as he is, Mary is full of spirit and reason.

     “Has it occurred to you?” she asks, calmly, “that if Herod does not find our baby, he might not stop and killing EVERY baby?” This has been in her mind already, since the Magi arrived. She grew up in Jerusalem. She knows Herod.

     But they did not travel alone. Why does everyone assumed they came to Bethlehem alone? In this time it is Anne as the wise crone, good Saint Anne,who says, perhaps with cousins, perhaps with Joachim, “You must go. You must go right away.”

     “But, Mother—”

     “We will go, your father and I will. We will move through the town—it is a small one—and warn the women to hide their children.”

     Not all the women listen, or are able to hide their children. The slaughter of the innocents, which medieval artists in their desire to portray bloodbaths and make an army of infant martyrs, are wrong. In the end the number of children dead is around three. This is why it’s never reall talked about anywhere but Matthew.

     Only three, well then why the business about a loud cry in Ramah? But listen, is the death of three or two or one child, the wailing of one family nothing?

 

Why do the work of changing the story, or adding to it. Because this is the work religious people have always done, because to add to this story is to add to how we see God working in the world the story portrays, to add to how we see ourselves working to bring about grace as well. To tell a story where Mary is thoughtful, the wise men wise and Anne saves as many people as possible if far different from the brief slaughter house tale we get in Matthew and the God is different and the world as well.

 

Here into this story I have introduced the Hag, Anne as the Grandmother of the World. The Hag of Winter is an important person we have overlooked, and now we come to her. In this next wheel of the Octave, as we go deeper and deeper, we seek winter wisdom from the Hag.

At this point in Christmas, we must go beyond the Bible. We have to go beyond the Gospels and the originating Christian theology, because Christmas was a thing that invaded Christianity. The birthday of the Lord was not something that was celebrated naturally, and it’s always been a bit of trouble to Christians. Can we hold onto this thread of the Nativity. See where it leads, what it tells us?

 

Christmas is the celebration of a very small and fragile beginning. To celebrate is to observe, the keep, to hold. To celebrate is also to maintain a light for the little light, to foster it. The lantern Joseph carries is the lantern shielding the Christ Light, the light of the Christ Child for extinction. A little child shall lead them, but when he does, what a strange following, an almost doomed following. This fragile beginning looks like the end. Much is the same. Not only is old Herod still king, but he has the power to slay. The shepherds have the message of a child born to be shepherd of all, but what can this child do? Mary’s message is one of expectant pain. The peace on earth, though a declaration is one scarcely heard and seldom obeyed and the angels cannot be seen by those not looking. The miracle is easy to miss and not only easy, but missed. Belief is to travel beyond your own mind, well, in keeping this feast I am traveling beyond my own mind, my own sight, my own ability. I strike the wall of grief, despair, boredom and then must move past it with faith. And faith is not some dumb belief in facts, but the active moving into another state. It is good to remember that, right now, we are in the business of remaking the whole world.