Death at Christmastime

Photo Courtesy of CNN Online News; Copyright 2011 CNN

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the

Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in

Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under,

in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.

Matthew 2:16-18

Last weekend, Tropical Storm Washi swept across the lower Philippines, setting off landslides and flash floods that swept away entire villages.  A total of 1,080 people are unaccounted for, including many children.  Pictures of the missing are posted everywhere in the region, with the faint hope that someone will unexpectedly turn up safe somewhere.  At almost the same time last Friday, two suicide bombers killed over 40 people inside/outside a security services building in Damascus, Syria.  Yesterday, 14 bombs went off throughout the capital city of Baghdad, killing at least 70 people and injuring over 200.

Violent deaths around Christmastime are nothing new – the first one occurred approximately two years after the birth of the Christ Child, when the Magi showed up in Jerusalem, following the star that had led them from the East to the Palestinian territories.  Their visit alerted King Herod to the birth of the foretold Messiah, and he made a deal with the Magi to return to him with the exact location of the child.  When they went home by a different direction, having been warned by God not to return to Jerusalem, Herod went on a rampage, ordering his soldiers to murder every male child two years old and younger throughout the entire village of Bethlehem and the surrounding countryside.  Joseph and Mary, however, had taken their newborn son and, at the direction of an angel messenger, fled to Egypt.