A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more. The Church today celebrates the memory of the babies whom Herod put to death in his attempt to kill Jesus. It was a tragic beginning to the reign of peace that the birth of Jesus was meant to usher. It also pointed to the kind of a world that Jesus was being born into: a world that was not ready and willing to accept him and his message of peace and non-violence, a world that saw no crime in killing the innocent and the defenseless. It was a world that definitely needed salvation.  Ironically, it is this very Jesus and his message that holds the key to this much needed salvation.
The murdered babies were vulnerable and had no way of defending themselves from people like Herod. They were yet to learn how to selfishly hold on to things and to the world. They had not learned even how hold fast to their dear lives. Because of their dependent and trusting nature, they had not come to the point of seeing others as competitors and threats. In their unadulterated innocence, they still perceived in others companionship and friendship. This was in total contrast to Herod who saw in the baby Jesus (and by extension the babies he murdered) nothing but threat – a threat to his throne and to the power that came with it. Herod represented what had become of the world that God had created. It was a far cry from the world that God had marveled in at the completion of creation. It was a world that had become a pale shadow of the world which God had intended to reflect the beauty, harmony and interdependence found in the God-head. The world had been turned into a competition sphere where anyone different from me is viewed as a threat to my well-being and existence. This susceptibility to seeing the other as a threat is the malaise that ails the world, the darkness that has enveloped the world. This is the darkness which St. John is referring to in today’s First reading. And as he further says, the only remedy for this ailment is taking the side of Jesus, that is, seeing Jesus not as a threat to be eliminated but rather as a friend who has come to light our way. Without him by our side, St. John reiterates, we will always find ourselves stumbling for we will have no light to illumine our ways.
While the babies killed by Herod were not yet able to profess their faith in Jesus and to take their stand by his side, they are martyrs nonetheless because they were killed because of Jesus. They were killed as a rejection of all that Jesus stands for. When we therefore make a stand that opposes the values of Jesus, we become co-conspirators with Herod and become complicit in their murder. Any stance that we take that contradicts Jesus is a contribution in the continued murder of the innocent and most vulnerable in the society. And when we do that, we should be aware that God is lending an ear to Rachel’s sobbing.