On the 29th of December, Our Holy Orthodox Church Commemorates the 14,000 Holy INFANTS MASSACRED BY HEROD

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My beloved brothers and sisters in the Divine Incarnate Logos,

CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!

"Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in dream, saying,
‘Arise, and take the young Child and His Mother, and flee thou into
Egypt, and be thou there until I should tell thee; for Herod is about
to seek the young Child, to destroy Him" [Matthew 2:13]. And he
arose and took the young Child and His Mother by night and departed
into Egypt" [Matthew 2:14].

She who knew not wedlock said, "O Son without beginning , I am
blessed beyond words in Thy strange birth, wherein I have been
spared all travail. And as I behold Thee fleeing from Herod with his
sword of sorrow, I am torn in soul. But do Thou live and save them
that honor Thee."

According to Eusebius, in his Church History, Herod was the first foreigner to be king of the Jewish nation, having been entrusted by the Romans with the government of the Jews, thus fulfilling the words of Moses; "A ruler shall not fail from Juda, nor a prince from his loins, until there come the things stored up for Him; and He is the expectation of hte nations" [Exodus 49:10]

Not long after the visit of Magi, Herod left for Rome where he remained for about one year. Coming back to Judaea, Herod knew that he had been mocked by the Magi, and his heart swelled with rage. He has the roads searched in his mad desire to have the family seized and put to death; but he could not find a trace of them.

Saint Kosmas writes, "Herod reckoned the time the guiding star had appeared, which brought the Magi to Bethlehem, there to worship Christ with gifts. Led back to their own land by that same star, they returned not to Herod, but mocked the wicked perpetrator of infancticide [Matthew 2:7-12]. Mulling over his thoughts, Herod pondered how he could most quickly destroy the Infant Who the Magi proclaimed. Then, after calculating the time from the appearance of the star to the Magi (which was nine months before they entered Jerusalem), he added the year of his own absence abroad, and counted twenty-one months. Desiring to be certain the Christ Child’s death, he would slay those infants twenty-four months and younger, instead of twenty-one months old. Then he called forth his army and commanded them to slay all male children two years of age.

Herod commanded his men to enter not only Bethlehem but also the large Province of Judah, on account of the misquoted verse of the Chief Priests and Scribes who said, "Bethlehem of Judah" [Matthew 2:6]. What the Prophet Micah actually prophesied was the small hamlet of Bethlehem, of which it is written: "And thou, Bethlehem, house of Ephratha, art few in number to be reckoned among the thousands of Judah [Micah 5:2[.  Thus, the mutilated Scripture verse ushered in the mutilating deaths of children.


   This terrible command of the king was carried out to the letter.  His soldiers cut off some of the children's heads with their swords, dashed others on the stones, trampled some of them underfoot and drowned others with their own hands.  The weeping and lamentation of their mother rose to heaven:  'Lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children' as had been prophesied" [Jeremiah 13:15; Matthew 2:18]. This evildoing towards the hordes of innocent children came to pass a year after the birth of Christ, at a time when Herod was trying to find the Divine Child. He sought Zacharias’s son, John, meaning to kill him in the belief that John was the new king. When Zacharias refused to hand over, he was killed in the Temple on Herod’s orders. Saint Simeon the Host of God was also killed, and went to God soon after the Presentation in the Temple. Slaying the children in Bethlehem, Herod then turned on the Jewish elders, who had revealed to him where the Messiah would be born. He killed Hyrcanes the High Priest, and seventy elders from the Sanhedrin, and thus they who conspired with Herod to kill the new baby King came to an evil end. After that Herod killed his own brother and sister and wife, and three of his sons. Finally, God’s punishment fell on him: he began to tremble, his legs swelled, the lower part of his body became putrid and worms came out of the sores, his nose became blocked and an unbearable stench spread around from it. At the time of his death, he remembered that there were many captive Jews in prison, so, that they should not rejoice at his death, he ordered that they all be slaughtered. Thus this terrible ruler lost his inhuman soul and was given to the devil for eternity. [Resources: The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church and The Prologue from Ochrid]

_______
"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
+ + +
With sincere agape in His Divine and Glorious Birth,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George

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