It's interesting to read from old journals I kept intermittently over the years. I have some reflections I wrote in a notebook thirty-five years ago, on December 28, 1990, marking the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The little children killed by Herod in his ruthless attempt to destroy the 'newborn King' in Bethlehem are each and all honored as martyrs and saints in the Church.
Life changes, technologies change, aspirations and disappointments change, nations and governments change. I have certainly changed in so many ways.
Still, my faith remains the same. What I referred to as "the new reality in our midst" in 1990 remains "new" now, at the end of the year 2025. Jesus Christ uniting Himself with us and redeeming us places Him always "at the center of human life."
When we celebrate these feasts each year, we remember and experience afresh the "new reality" of Christ who has come to dwell with us and who renews all things.
From December 28, 1990:
"These martyrs did not preach. Unlike Stephen two days ago they did not see visions. They were simply there. They were victims to man's hatred and fear of God's coming. But God has come, and man's indiscriminate rage against Him cannot conquer Him: rather, in some mysterious way even it becomes the 'stuff' - the material - for something new. God's victorious coming is made manifest by the fact that these unconscious victims of slaughter are real witnesses. The event of their deaths occurs for the sake of the new reality in our midst, and shares in that reality and in the glory it establishes at the center of human life."
