Home > Op-ed | To bottom

The blood of the innocents

“When Herod realized that the visitors from the East had tricked him, he was furious. He gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its neighborhood who were two years old and younger—this was done in accordance with what he had learned from the visitors about the time when the star appeared.” — Matthew 2:16

Martyrdom

Every December 31, our country commemorates the death anniversary of a Filipino martyr, Dr. Jose Rizal, who was mercilessly executed for courageously exposing and opposing with his pen the barbaric powers of the Spanish crown. His blood and those of other Filipino martyrs who came before and after him have been nourishing indeed our struggle for genuine freedom and independence.

Three days before Rizal Day, the whole Roman Catholic world also celebrates the Feast of the Holy Innocents or Niños Inocentes. This traditional feast, which is celebrated in our country with a typical humor, recalls the slaying of Jewish children upon King Herod’s order for he wanted to make sure no one among them would live to seize the royal throne from him.

And then, some few days ago another church worker connected with the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Jose “Pepe” Manegdeg III, was again brutally murdered allegedly by elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. Pepe was the latest so far among church people who were victims of state brutality against those who are working for genuine and lasting peace. Before Pepe, we had Fr. William Tadena, Rev. Edison Lapuz, and Rev. Raul Domingo: all brutally murdered under the present administration.

Rizal Day, Niños Inocentes and the killings of church people have some things in common. They all speak of tragedies that had befallen humanity due to man’s inhumanity to his fellowman. They remind us of the moral bankruptcy that infected our lives. But at the same time they also underscore what is best in the human which could further us into newness of life. They talk of the blood of the innocents that were sacrificed to bring about the realization of God’s saving act in the lives of people.

Political Killings

The Biblical story in Matthew 2:16-18 is about the killing of children in Bethlehem and its neighborhood. They were massacred upon King Herod’s orders. The story of Christmas is not just the story of the birth of a child; it is also the story of the death of children. Behind the backdrop of angels rejoicing and singing for the birth of the Son of God is Bethlehem where mothers were weeping and crying for sons who were slaughtered by King Herod’s soldiers.

Let us recall that before this tragedy there were visitors from the East who went to Jerusalem, looking for the child born to be the King of the Jews. According to the Biblical account, King Herod heard about this, and he was very much upset. The people of Jerusalem were also upset because they knew what would happen next.

King Herod was known for his mastery in the art of assassinations. It was said that he was appointed by the Romans to be the King of the Jews simply because he succeeded in killing all the possible rivals to the throne. As soon as he became ruler of Palestine, he started annihilating the members of the Sanhedrin, the Supreme Court of the Jews. Later, he also slaughtered three hundred court officers, murdered his own wife Mariamne and her mother Alexandria, his own eldest son Antipater, and two other sons, Alexander and Aristobulos – on mere suspicions. And at the hour of his death, he even arranged for the slaughter of notable men of Jerusalem.

This was King Herod – a tyrannical ruler who governed his own people with blood in his hands. It was not to be expected, therefore, that King Herod would calmly accept the news that a child had been born to be the King of the Jews.

Let us also recall from the Biblical story how he had carefully inquired of the visitors from the East as to when they had seen the star. But even then he was craftily working out the age of the child so that he might take steps towards murder. Then, he put his plans into swift and savage action. He ordered that every child under two years of age in Bethlehem and the surrounding district be killed.

King Herod is no different from many politicians today who are more zealous for power than for service. They surround themselves with private armies who are more than willing to maim and kill upon their orders. But no matter how much innocent blood spilled by the enemies of the Gospel of Christ – the Gospel of love, of truth and justice – they will not be able to extinguish nor block God’s historical plan for salvation and liberation.

Killing of today’s children

The killing of innocent children continues in our time in many senseless ways. Their slow death is perpetrated by criminal neglect, by lack of food, of potable water, maternal and natal care.

Moreover, children today are also victims of modern wars. This takes us back to the reign of King Herod in Palestine, who persecuted children in order to eliminate his enemies. Children today are indeed the saddest victims of senseless wars and bloody conflicts. They are forced to serve in the battle zones. And they bear the scars of the soul, as traumatized witnesses of violence against their own families and loved ones.

From 1972 to 1985, various human rights groups documented more than 4.5 million children affected by increased militarization under the repressive military rule of then President Marcos. According to the statistics of the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines and the Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace, the number of children who died in the raging war in the countryside under the Aquino Administration reached more than a million. And despite the peace initiatives of the succeeding administrations as well as the present one, the war against the insurgents still goes on.

Furthermore, there are other subtle injustices that strike at the children with greatest cruelty. In a way, perhaps every global problem exacts the heaviest toll on the health and welfare of children. The foreign debt, the destruction of the earth’s ecology, the structures of social injustice that create volatile conflict situations, are depriving children of their prospects for a better life. Former Health Secretary Alfredo Bengson was right when he said, “No suffering and no grief grieve us as much as those that strike children. Children pay the price of their parents’ mistakes.”

Blaming the victims

It is quite significant to note that among the New Testament writers, it is only Matthew who wrote about the massacre of the innocent children in Bethlehem. The town of Bethlehem as we know was not like the City of Jerusalem, the seat of power. Perhaps, the number of children in that small town would not exceed from twenty to thirty. Hence, in a land where murder was so widespread, the slaughter of twenty or thirty children would perhaps have little impact and would mean very little except to the broken-hearted mothers of Bethlehem.

But perhaps, it would be a different story if those slaughtered were the children of the powerful people in Jerusalem. Some Biblical critics are even saying that the slaughter of children in Bethlehem could not have taken place simply because there was no mention of it in any writing outside Matthew’s account in the New Testament. For instance, the famous Jewish historian Josephus did not even mention it. But the fact that a thing is not mentioned even by those who are supposed to mention it, is no proof at all that it did not happen. The whole incident is so typical of King Herod that we need not doubt that Matthew is passing the truth down to us.

What is happening in our country today would illustrate this point. For instance, whenever there are reports about massacres of children and civilians from the hinterlands of Negros, Samar, Mindanao, Bicol, Quezon, Mindoro or Cordillera as results of counter-insurgency campaigns, people in Manila seem not to be affected at all. Even if the relatives of the victims will go down to Manila and shout to their hearts content in front of Congress or Senate in order to be heard, no one seems to be listening.

Some would even say that reports of children being killed are just communist ploy to grab state power. Still others would say that there was no evacuation of civilians or killing of children, because there was no official report from government authorities, except those from church groups and other non-government organizations that are unfortunately accused of being communist fronts.

This however is not entirely true. Our national government submitted a national paper to the World Summit on Children stating that 120,000 children are affected each year by the counter-insurgency campaigns. However, in cases where it is proven that there are indeed killings of innocent children, authorities would just say that it is merely an isolated case. In the end, the victims themselves are the ones being blamed for their own misfortunes.

A time to remember

Thanks be to God, for we have servants of God like Matthew and his likes of today! Matthew was courageous enough to put on record what King Herod had done to the innocent children of Bethlehem in order to remind, to challenge, and even to forewarn people through the ages about the truth that when rulers are obsessed and drunk with power, surely the blood of the innocents will be shed.

Let Christmas be the time for us to remember the blood of the innocents – the blood of the innocent children of Bethlehem, the blood of Filipino martyrs then and now, and the blood of the innocent children in the countryside and in the dark alleys of our city streets who are victims of violence and criminal neglect. For these are the blood of Christ being shed through the ages so that we will find our true selves and be cleansed from all unrighteousness and offer ourselves in the service of our people as our best gift to the child being born, not only to be the King of the Jews, but the King of kings and the Lord of lords. #

Home > Op-ed | Back to top