Daily prayers during the 12 Days of Christmas: 4, 28 December 2023

‘Four colly birds on the Fourth Day of Christmas … the four evangelists depicted in the the East Window in Roscarberrry Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Fourth Day of Christmas and the Church Calendar today remembers the Holy Innocents (28 December 2023).

Before today begins, I am taking some time for reading, reflection and prayer.

My reflections each morning during the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a verse from the popular Christmas song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’;

2, the Gospel reading of the day;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

‘Four colly birds’ … symbols of the Four Evangelists in a window in Saint Mary’s Church, Badby, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The 12 Days of Christmas: 4, Four Colly Birds:

The Fourth Day of Christmas, 28 December, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents in the Book of Common Prayer, and is known in some places as ‘Childermass.’ The story of the Holy Innocents is one of the most poignant stories in the Bible: ‘Rachel weeping for her children … because they are no more.’

I had lost my innocence by late teens: by 19, I was trying to break out as a freelance journalist in England with the Lichfield Mercury, wondering whether I should give up the ‘day job’ as a trainee chartered surveyor; by the age of 20, I had my own flat in Wexford, where I was working as a staff journalist with the Wexford People. I remember one Christmas in Wexford in those days of the 1970s how the late Maurice Sinnott suggested that this day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, would be a good day for the Churches to recall the victims of war, particularly the children who had been killed by the Hiroshima bomb.

Holy Innocents’ Day is being marked later today by the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship with an online gathering. Along with links to what is happening in 2023, the gathering will also look at some of the wider issues, including an input from Canada about the victims of residential schools and child refugees around so many conflicts. Malcolm Guite will be reading his sonnet, ‘Refugee’, and there will be a video update from Sudan following attacks on 19 December.

Oscar Schindler famously said: ‘Whoever saves the life of one saves the entire world.’ He was referring to a well-known teaching in the Talmud: ‘Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world’ (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4: 8, 37a). It is a teaching that has inspired the inscription on medals awarded to the Righteous Gentiles, those brave people who risked their own lives to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust: ‘Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he had saved the whole world.’

The obvious deduction from that, of course, is: Whoever destroys the innocence of one child, it is as if he has destroyed the innocence of all children, as if he has destroyed the childhood of everyone. It is for this reason that Jesus reserves his most severe and most frightening warning and rebuke for those sort of people (see Mark 9: 42; Luke 17: 2).

This is an appropriate day to remember those children whose innocence has been destroyed this year by war in Gaza, Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and Russia, in forgotten wars, by poverty and by the cruelty of governments who think refugees, asylum seekers and their children are mere commodities to be exported to Rwanda or locked away in decrepit and inhumane accommodation.

But this is a good day too to give thanks for the children in our lives, whether in our own families or in the larger family of the Church. And it is a good day to revive the ancient custom of parents blessing their children at the end of the day as part of their nightly prayers.

The fourth verse of the traditional song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is:

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me …
four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.

Colly birds were blackbirds, but the Christian interpretation of this song often describes them as ‘calling birds’ so that they come to represent the Four Evangelists or the Four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

‘The Killing of the Holy Innocents’ by Giotto (ca 1304-1306) in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua … 28 December is marked in the Church Calendar as the feast day of the Holy Innocents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 2: 13-18 (NRSVA):

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

John Hutton’s ‘Screen of Saints and Angels’ at the entrance to Coventry Cathedral ... the Coventry Carol, dating from the 16th century, recalls the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 28 December 2023, the Holy Innocents):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Love at Advent and Christmas.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (28 December 2023, The Holy Innocents) invites us to pray in these words:

On this day, may we cherish our young people and provide them with the guidance and knowledge to navigate our complex and challenging world.

The Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
in your humility you have stooped to share our human life
with the most defenceless of your children:
may we who have received these gifts of your passion
rejoice in celebrating the witness of the Holy Innocents
to the purity of your sacrifice
made once for all upon the cross;
for you are alive and reign, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Images of the Four Evangelists on the carved altar in Church of the Assumption, Moyvane, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Morning prayers in Easter with USPG: (20) 28 April 2023

The Bethlehem Chapel in the Old Town in Prague is closely linked with Jan Hus and the Bohemian Reformation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

We are still in the season of Easter, and this is the Third Week of Easter. Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship commemorates Peter Chanel, Missionary in the South Pacific, Martyr (1841).

Before this day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection. Following our visit to Prague earlier this month, I am reflecting each morning this week in these ways:

1, Short reflections on a church in Prague;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Inside the Bethlehem Chapel in the Old Town in Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

The Bethlehem Chapel, Prague:

The Bethlehem Chapel (Betlémská kaple) is a mediaeval chapel in the Old Town of Prague, and is closely linked with the origins of the Bohemian Reformation, especially with the Czech reformer Jan Hus (1370-1415).

The chapel was named after the Holy Innocents, massacred in Bethlehem by Herod the Great in his attempt to kill the new-born Christ Child (see Matthew 2: 13-18).

The Bethlehem Chapel was founded in Prague in 1391 by Wenceslas Kříž ‘the Merchant’ and John of Milheim. The only language used in sermons in the chapel was the Czech vernacular, breaking with German domination of the mediaeval Bohemian Church.

Bethlehem Chapel was founded in 1391 in Prague by a shopkeeper Jan Kříž and a courtier Hanuš of Műhlheim. Kříž donated a garden of about 800 sq m for building the chapel. The land included a well, and a cottage and acellar that later became the preacher’s and the custodian’s house. The front part of Kříž’s house, which fronts Dominikánská Street, now Husova Street, was used to establish a student college called Nazareth.

Bethlehem was only ever a chapel and was never officially called a church, although it could hold 3,000 people. Indeed, the chapel was withing the boundaries of the Parish of Saint Philip and Saint James, and Hanuš of Milheim paid the rector of that church 90 grossi in compensation.

In the Bethlehem Chapel, ideas found expression that previously then were only heard in debate at Charles University. Jan Hus became the preacher in the chapel in March 1402, and his sermons addressed many of the questions raised by Milič of Kroměříž, Matěj of Janov and the English reformer John Wyclif.

His sermons drew large numbers, and Queen Sophia, the wife of King Wenceslas IV, attended some of them. It is said that she would sit in an oratory built by Kříž by the east wall of the chapel and connected by a passageway to his house.

After the excommunication of Hus in 1412, the Pope ordered the Bethlehem Chapel to be pulled down, although this action was rejected by the Czech majority on the Old Town council.

Hus served in the Bethlehem Chapel until 1412, when he was excommunicated and forced to leave Prague. He was executed in 1415. Hus’s successor, Jakoubek of Stříbro, introduced Communion in both kinds.

The chapel was transferred by the university in the 17th century to the Jesuits, who reinstated Catholic liturgy. The Jesuits were expelled in 1773, the Bethlehem Chapel was linked with Saint Giles Church for a short time, and it then became the property of the state. It fell into disrepair, dangerous cracks appeared, and there was a danger of the vault falling.

The chapel was partly demolished in 1786, and the surviving masonry was incorporated into an apartment building that was built in 1836-1837 and that stood until 1949.

After World War II, the chapel was restored to its state at the time of Hus, using all the surviving materials and engravings. Most of the exterior walls and a small portion of the pulpit date back to the mediaeval chapel.

The renovated Bethlehem Chapel, including the house of the preachers, reopened to the public as a National Cultural Monument in 1954. The wall paintings are largely from Hus’s time there, and the text below is taken from his work De sex erroribus, and contrast the poverty of Christ with the riches of the Church in Hus’s time.

In 1993, the Bethlehem Chapel became the ceremonial hall of the Czech Technical University in Prague, which continues to maintain the chapel. It is the venue for graduations and an annual ecumenical meeting takes here on the anniversary of the execution of Jan Hus on 6 July 1415. The chapel and house of the preachers are open to the public.

Queen Sophia, the wife of King Wenceslas IV, attended some of the sermons by Jan Hus in the Bethlehem Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

John 6: 52-59 (NRSVA):

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’ 59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

The Bethlehem Chapel ibcludes an exhibition on the life of Jan Hus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Praying for Peace.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Anglican Chaplain in Warsaw, Poland, the Revd David Brown, who reflected on peace in the light of the International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace earlier this week.

The USPG Prayer invites us to pray this morning (Friday 28 April 2023):

Let us pray for families hosting refugees. May their homes be a place of refuge and warmth and may host and hosted be recipients of grace and blessing.

Collect:

Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
with the sight of the risen Lord:
give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion:

Living God,
your Son made himself known to his disciples
in the breaking of bread:
open the eyes of our faith,
that we may see him in all his redeeming work;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The well in the Bethlehem Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The Bethlehem Chapel was restored after World War II and reopened to the public in 1954 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Praying at Christmas through poems and with USPG: 28 December 2022

‘The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua’ … 28 December is marked in the Church Calendar as the feast day of the Holy Innocents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas is not a season of 12 days, despite the popular Christmas song. Christmas is a 40-day season that lasts from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

Today, 28 December, is marked in the Church Calendar as the feast day of the Holy Innocents, sometimes described as the first martyrs for Christ.

Throughout the 40 days of this Christmas Season, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflecting on a seasonal or appropriate poem;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

Appropriately, the Christmas poem I have chosen for today is ‘The Holy Innocents’ by Laurence Housman (1865-1959).

Today’s commemoration first appears in the calendar of the Western Church in the Leonine Sacramentary around the year 485, and this day was sometimes known as Childermas.

This day recalls the story of the children who were murdered because of Herod’s rage against Christ (Matthew 2: 16-17). In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, after the visit of the Magi, Herod, in rage and jealousy, slaughtered all the baby boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding countryside in an attempt to destroy his perceived rival, the infant Messiah.

Christian art, poetry and popular piety have treated their memory with tenderness and sympathy, sentiments that have also been accompanied by feelings of indignation against the violence with which they were killed.

On this day it also seems to be appropriate to remember the children who are innocent victims of exploitation, abuse and war throughout the world, and those who suffer violence that threatens their lives, their dignity and their rights.

The poem ‘Holy Innocents’ by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) was written ca 1877. Like so many of her poems, including ‘In the bleak mid-winter,’ which I discussed on Christmas Eve, and her poems about Saint John which I discussed yesterday, her poem ‘Holy Innocents’ was not published until ten years after her death, when it was included in 1904 in The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti:

They scarcely waked before they slept,
They scarcely wept before they laughed;
They drank indeed death’s bitter draught,
But all its bitterest dregs were kept
And drained by Mothers while they wept.

From Heaven the speechless Infants speak:
Weep not (they say), our Mothers dear,
For swords nor sorrows come not here.
Now we are strong who were so weak,
And all is ours we could not seek.

We bloom among the blooming flowers,
We sing among the singing birds;
Wisdom we have who wanted words:
here morning knows not evening hours,
All’s rainbow here without the showers.

And softer than our Mother’s breast,
And closer than our Mother’s arm,
Is here the Love that keeps us warm
And broods above our happy next.
Dear Mothers, come: for Heaven is best.

A second, later poem, but also called ‘Holy Innocents,’ was written before 1893, and was published in the same collection in 1904:

Unspotted lambs to follow the one Lamb,
Unspotted doves to wait on the one Dove;
To whom Love saith, ‘Be with Me where I am,’
And lo their answer unto Love is love.

For tho’ I know not any note they know,
Nor know one word of all their song above,
I know Love speaks to them, and even so
I know the answer unto Love is love.

A third poem, also called ‘Holy Innocents’ but dated 1 July 1853, was published in the same volume, but appears to be about the early death of a child rather about the Holy Innocents commemorated on this day:

Sleep, little baby, sleep;
The holy Angels love thee,
And guard thy bed, and keep
A blessed watch above thee.

No spirit can come near
Nor evil beast to harm thee:
Sleep, Sweet, devoid of fear
Where nothing need alarm thee.

The Love which doth not sleep,
The eternal Arms surround thee:
The Shepherd of the sheep
In perfect love hath found thee.

Sleep through the holy night,
Christ-kept from snare and sorrow,
Until thou wake to light
And love and warmth to-morrow.

John Hutton’s ‘Screen of Saints and Angels’ at the entrance to Coventry Cathedral ... the Coventry Carol, dating from the 16th century, recalls the story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Much earlier than these Victorian poems is ‘The Coventry Carol,’ which tells the story of the slaughter of the Innocents. This carol dates from the 16th century, and is all that survives from a mystery play:

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Also dating from the 16th century, or perhaps even earlier from the late 14th century, is the hymn ‘Unto us is born a son.’ It has been translated by both George R Woodward and Percy Dearmer. I have heard the Woodward version of this hymn at carol services in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, including the third stanza:

This did Herod sore affray,
And grievously bewilder;
So he gave the word to slay,
And slew the little childer.

However, the Christmas poem I have chosen for today is ‘The Holy Innocents’ by Laurence Housman. He was born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, a younger brother of the poet AE Housman (1859-1936), who is best known for A Shropshire Lad, including the ‘Six Songs’ and the poem ‘Wenlock Edge,’ set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Laurence Housman first worked as a book illustrator in London, and the first authors he illustrated included the poet Christina Rossetti. At the same time, he also wrote and published several volumes of poetry and a number of hymns and carols.

His first literary successes came with the novel An Englishwoman’s Love-Letters (1900), and the drama Bethlehem (1902). Some of his plays caused scandals because of his depiction of biblical characters and living members of the royal family, and in 1937 the Lord Chamberlain ruled that no British sovereign could be portrayed on the stage until 100 years after the beginning of his or her reign.

Housman also wrote socialist and pacifist pamphlets and edited his brother’s poems which were published posthumously. For the last three or four decades of his life he lived in Street, Somerset.

In 1945, he opened Housman’s Bookshop in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, founded in his honour by the Peace Pledge Union, of which he was a sponsor. The Peace Pledge Union, one of the earliest pacifist organisations in England, was founded in 1934 by Housman’s close friend, Canon Dick Sheppard (1880-1937) of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, a former Vicar of Saint Martin-in–the-Fields (1914-1926) and former Dean of Canterbury (1929-1931) who had been radicalised by his experiences as a slum priest in the East End of London.

In 1959, shortly after his death, the shop moved to 5 Caledonian Road, London, a two-minute walk from all the King’s Cross and Saint Pancras stations. In 1974, an IRA bomb blew up the pillar box directly outside the shop – the building once housed the local King’s Cross Post Office, from the late 19th century until the 1930s. The explosion destroyed the first issue of the newsletter of the Campaign Against Arms Trade, which had just been posted.

Harry Mister in Housman’s Bookshop before his death

I was first introduced to Housman’s Bookshop two years later in 1976 by its co-founder and its manager until that year, Harry Mister, after meeting him with Bruce Kent at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick, Derbyshire, that year. Harry died on my birthday in 1996, less than a fortnight after his own 92nd birthday; Bruce Kent died earlier this year (8 June 2022). Housman’s Bookshop remains a prime source of literature on pacifism and other radical values, and passing the shopfront on the morning of Bruce Kent's funeral evoked many nostalgic memories.

The Peace Pledge Union has ‘consistently condemned the violence, oppression and weapons of all belligerents.’ It has opposed the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it has promoted the ideals of pacifists such as Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, it played an active role in the first Aldermaston marches, and its members were active in the formation of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

And so, given Housman’s association, even long after his death, with campaigns against war, it is appropriate to select his poem, ‘The Holy Innocents,’ on this day.


The Holy Innocents by Laurence Housman

When Christ was born in Bethlehem,
Fair peace on earth to bring,
In lowly state of love He came
To be the children’s King.

And round Him, then, a holy band
Of children blest was born,
Fair guardians of His throne to stand
Attendant night and morn.

And unto them this grace was giv’n
A Saviour’s name to own,
And die for Him Who out of Heav’n
Had found on earth a throne.

O blessèd babes of Bethlehem,
Who died to save our King,
Ye share the martyrs’ diadem,
And in their anthem sing!

Your lips, on earth that never spake,
Now sound th’eternal word;
And in the courts of love ye make
Your children’s voices heard.

Lord Jesus Christ, eternal Child,
Make Thou our childhood Thine;
That we with Thee the meek and mild
May share the love divine.

A detail from The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is the USPG Christmas Appeal: Journey to Freedom. The Journey to Freedom campaign supports the anti-human trafficking programme of the Diocese of Durgapur in North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for children who are trafficked and exploited. May we be enraged by injustice and seek to protect the vulnerable.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Slaughter of the Innocents by Domenico Ghirlandaio: the fresco is part of a series of panels in the Cappella Tornabuoni in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, dating from 1486-1490

With the Saints through Christmas (3): 28 December 2021, the Holy Innocents

The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Our Christmas celebrations continue this week, the season does not end even after the ’12 Days of Christmas.’ This is a season that continues for 40 days until the Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas (2 February).

I am in Askeaton after yesterday’s Baptism in Saint Mary’s Church, and I have started working on next Sunday’s services and sermons in Askeaton and Tarbert. But, before this day begins, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer, reflection and reading.

I am continuing my Prayer Diary on my blog each morning, reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflections on a saint remembered in the calendars of the Church during Christmas;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

It is theologically important to remind ourselves in the days after Christmas Day of the important link between the Incarnation and bearing witness to the Resurrection faith.

Saint Stephen’s Day on Sunday (26 December), Holy Innocents’ Day today (28 December), and the commemoration of Thomas à Beckett tomorrow (29 December) are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. Close on the joy of Christmas comes the cost of following Christ. A popular expression, derived from William Penn, says: ‘No Cross, No Crown.’

The Church Calendar today (28 December) recalls the massacre of the Holy Innocents, who are sometimes revered as the first Christian martyrs. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast tomorrow (29 December).

These dates have nothing to do with the chronological order of the event. Instead, the feast is kept within the octave of Christmas because the Holy Innocents gave their life for the new-born Saviour. Saint Stephen the first martyr (martyr by will, love and blood, 26 December), Saint John the Evangelist (27 December, martyr by will and love), and these first flowers of the Church (martyrs by blood alone) accompany the Christ Child entering this world on Christmas Day.

This commemoration first appears as a feast of the western church at the end of the fifth century, and the earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), bringing together the murder of the Innocents and the visit of the Magi.

The story of the massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide by King Herod the Great (Matthew 2: 16-18). According to Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem to save him from losing his throne to a new-born king whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi:

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the visiting magi from the east arrive in Judea in search of the new-born king of the Jews, having “observed his star at its rising” (Matthew 2: 2). Herod directs them to Bethlehem, and asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find the Christ Child and honour him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way. Meanwhile, Joseph has taken Mary and the child and they have escaped to Egypt.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel provides the only account of the Massacre. This incident is not mentioned in the other three gospels, nor is it mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, who records Herod’s murder of his own sons. When the Emperor Augustus heard that Herod had ordered the murder of his own sons, he remarked: “It is better to be Herod’s pig, than his son.”

Saint Matthew’s story recalls passages in Hosea referring to the exodus, and in Jeremiah referring to the Babylonian exile, and the accounts in Exodus of the birth of Moses and the slaying of the first-born children by Pharaoh.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1,000, would be about 20. But Byzantine liturgy estimated 14,000 Holy Innocents were murdered, while an early Syrian list of saints put the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December.

Later, the Church of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome was said to possess the bodies of several of the Holy Innocents. Some of these relics were transferred by Pope Sixtus V to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

In many cathedrals in England, Germany and France, the boy bishops who were elected on the feast of Saint Nicholas (6 December) officiated on the feasts of Saint Nicholas and the Holy Innocents. The boy bishop wore a mitre and other episcopal insignia, sang the collect, preached, and gave the blessing. He sat in the bishop’s throne or cathedra in the cathedral while the choir-boys sang in the stalls of the canons, when they directed the choir on these two days and had their solemn procession.

The Reconciliation monument in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral … the ‘Coventry Carol’ recalls a mother’s lament for her doomed child (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Coventry Carol, an English Christmas carol from the 16th century and performed as part of a mystery play, depicts the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem. The carol is traditionally sung a cappella, and there is a modern setting of the carol by Professor Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988).

The lyrics represent a mother’s lament for her doomed child:

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we do sing
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh,
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Also dating from the 16th century, or perhaps even earlier from the late 14th century, is the hymn ‘Unto us is born a son.’ It has been translated by both George R Woodward and Percy Dearmer. Woodward’s version of this hymn has been sung regularly at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, including the third stanza:

This did Herod sore affray,
And grievously bewilder;
So he gave the word to slay,
And slew the little childer.

A detail from The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)


Matthew 2: 13-18 (NRSVA):

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (28 December 2021, The Holy Innocents) invites us to pray:

On this day, may we cherish our young people and provide them with the guidance and knowledge to navigate our complex and challenging world.

The Collect of the Day:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod:
By your great might frustrate all evil designs,
and establish your reign of justice, love and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday: Saint John the Evangelist

Tomorrow: Saint Thomas Becket

A detail from the Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The innocence of children and the ‘divine dignity inherent in every soul’

Christ and the Children … a stained-glass window in Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick

Monday 27 December 2021

3 p.m.: Holy Baptism, Ella Roseline Hilary Delbarry

The Readings: Jeremiah 31: 15-17; Psalm 124; I Corinthians 1: 26-29; Matthew 2: 13-18.

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

The days immediately after Christmas recall some of the great saints and martyrs of the early Christian faith: Saint Stephen (26 December), Saint John the Evangelist (27 December) and the Holy Innocents (28 December).

Saint Stephen, Saint John, the Holy Innocents and Saint Thomas à Beckett the day after tomorrow (29 December) are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. Close on the joy of Christmas comes the cost of following Christ.

We remember the children who are the Holy Innocents tomorrow, three days after Christmas Day. This seems so out of sequence, long before the Magi or three Wise Men arrive at Herod’s Palace, never mind at the stable in Bethlehem.

This commemoration first appears as a feast of the western church at the end of the fifth century, and the earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), bringing together the murder of the Innocents and the visit of the Magi.

But tomorrow’s Feast of the Holy Innocents, coming so soon after Christmas Day, is an important corrective to some of the prejudices that have become confused with and mixed up with Christianity.

We do not know how many children under the age of two were killed. The numbers vary from 20 (Catholic Encyclopaedia), to 14,000 (Byzantine liturgy), 64,000 (Syrian liturgy), to even 144,000 (Coptic tradition) – the highest figure represents one a minute every day for 10 days; but it also plays on the figure of 144,000 in the Book of Revelation (see Revelation 7: 3-8, 14: 1). In other words, these children figuratively come to represent God’s promise of salvation for the whole of humanity.

Have you considered that these children were never baptised?

Have you ever considered that if these children are innocent, then the Christmas story tells us that, in Christ, every child is innocent?

We baptise children not because they are guilty of anything, not because they need to be made clean in some superstitious way.

In recent weeks, I spent some time reading and reviewing for a journal a new major statement from the Orthodox Church, For the Life of the World.

This may seem like an academic exercise to many. But it makes key insightful statements on children and love.

For example, it says true love can be expressed through children. ‘Already in the womb, each of us is a spiritual creature, a person formed in God’s image and created to rejoice in God’s presence.’ It constantly affirms ‘the full equality and dignity of each human person created in the image and likeness of God’ and ‘the inviolable sanctity of each person’, the ‘divine dignity inherent in every soul.’

It says the ‘Church should extend the sacramental gift of baptism to all children, irrespective of the manner in which they were conceived or adopted,’ and presumes ‘the baptism of infants, and also in their immediate admission to the Eucharist.’

It finds ‘the truest model of life in God’s Kingdom in the innocence of children,’ and it speaks eloquently of ‘the innocence of children’ as ‘a thing of extraordinary holiness, a sign of the life of the Kingdom graciously present in our very midst.’

And so, Ella Roseline Hilary Delbarry, in your innocence you show ‘extraordinary holiness, a sign of the life of the Kingdom graciously present in our very midst.’ You are a blessing to your parents, grandparents, godparents and your whole family; but you are also a blessing to the whole Church and to the whole world, for in you we find ‘the truest model of life in God’s Kingdom.’

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

A detail from the Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Matthew 2: 13-18 (NRSVA):

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

Liturgical colour: White.

The Penitential Kyries (Christmas):

Lord God, mighty God,
you are the creator of the world.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Lord Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary,
you are the Prince of Peace.

Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Holy Spirit,
by your power the Word was made flesh
and came to dwell among us.

Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod:
By your great might frustrate all evil designs,
and establish your reign of justice, love and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

We are fellow citizens with the saints
and of the household of God,
through Christ our Lord,
who came and preached peace to those who were far off
and those who were near. (Ephesians 2: 19, 17)

Blessing:

God give you grace
to share the inheritance of the Holy Innocents and of his saints in glory:

A detail from The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Possible Hymns:

393, This child from God above (CD 24)
184, Unto us is born a Son (CD 11)
10, All my hope on God is founded (CD 1)



Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Four colly birds on the Fourth Day of Christmas

The Slaughter of the Innocents by Domenico Ghirlandaio: the fresco is part of a series of panels in the Cappella Tornabuoni in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, dating from 1486-1490

Patrick Comerford

The Fourth Day of Christmas, 28 December, is the Feast of the Holy Innocents in the Book of Common Prayer, and is known in some places as “Childermass.” The story of the Holy Innocents is one of the most poignant stories in the Bible: “Rachel weeping for her children ... because they are no more.”

I had lost my innocence by late teens: by 19, I was trying to break out as a freelance journalist in England with the Lichfield Mercury, wondering whether I should give up the “day job” as a trainee chartered surveyor; by the age of 20 I had my own flat in Wexford, where I was working as a staff journalist with the Wexford People. I remember one Christmas in Wexford in those days of the 1970s how Maurice Sinnott suggested that this day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, would be a good day for the Churches to recall the victims of war, particularly the children who had been killed by the Hiroshima bomb.

Holy Innocents’ Day is the traditional day for the installation of a Boy Bishop in some English cathedrals. This is a day when children could have pre-eminence in family life, leading the family prayers, making decisions about family activities for the day, having the place of honour at meals, and so on.

Oscar Schindler famously said: “Whoever saves the life of one saves the entire world.” He was referring to a well-known teaching in the Talmud: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world” (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4: 8, 37a). It is a teaching that has inspired the inscription on medals awarded to the Righteous Gentiles, those brave people who risked their own lives to save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust: “Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he had saved the whole world.”

The obvious deduction from that, of course, is: Whoever destroys the innocence of one child, it is as if he has destroyed the innocence of all children, as if he has destroyed the childhood of everyone. It is for this reason that Jesus reserves his most severe and most frightening warning and rebuke for those sort of people (see Mark 9: 42; Luke 17: 2).

This is an appropriate day to remember those children whose innocence has been destroyed by people working in the Church.

But this is a good day too to give thanks for the children in our lives, whether in our own families or in the larger family of the Church. And it is a good day to revive the ancient custom of parents blessing their children at the end of the day as part of their nightly prayers.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas ... four colly birds

The fourth verse of the traditional song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, is:

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.

Colly birds were blackbirds, but the Christian interpretation of this song often describes them as “calling birds” so that they come to represent the Four Evangelists or the Four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Lectionary readings for the Eucharist today are: Jeremiah 31: 15-17; Psalm 124; I Corinthians 1: 26-29; Matthew 2: 13-18.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.