 |
| The Holy Innocents by Giotto di Bondone. |
Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents - those babies murdered by order of King Herod when he was trying to locate where Jesus was so that he could destroy him as a king born in his territory would be a terrible threat to the power of Herod and his descendents.
What a terrible day! Little baby boys sought out, grabbed by the soldiers of the King, and heartlessly butchered. Imagine the fear and the pain of those poor mothers. It is just too terrible to contemplate. Yet it happened, and it is happening in different ways all over the world of today. Children being abused, children dying of malnutrition, children being butchered to keep some dictator in power. Let's rememer all those children today, and their parents, that the God who once said: "Let the children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven!" will put his arms around those suffering mites of our world, and heal and comfort their parents. This is a prayer-poem about the Holy Innocents. Perhaps you would like to pray it as you think of that blood-soaked day of long ago in Bethlehem:
O Bethehem! 'tis not the rosebud's time to open,
O Bethlehem!
Yet fallen petals haunt thy ways,
Deep desolation moans in Rama,
Rachel bewailing sons that are not,
Disconsolate O Bethlehem!
O Bethlehem!
Incarnadined in riven roses,
O Bethlehem!
Hadst thou no room at all for him?
So very small was royal Juda,
Now there is room in every cradle
and he is gone, O Bethlehem!
Author unknown.
Where did you get this? I remember it from a carol book that I can't find now. It's a great translation, as I thought, of the original Basque, although I haven't been able to find it online in that guise, on sites where the song is more celebratory and not so poignantly tragic. There is at least one more stanza which I can't remember, but would love to recover. It ends with ". . . glory, Never from Heaven's golden story, Thy name shall fade, O Bethlehem!"
ReplyDeletedcprice@ucdavis.edu