THE WORD AND THE FEAST

LET US CELEBRATE CHILDREN

28th December 2017 - The Feast of the Holy Innocents

1 Jn 1:5 - 2:2; Mt 2:13-18

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is a reminder to celebrate the children with us and within us - the Gospel speaks of the latter and the first reading of the former! The call is threefold :

1. Let us celebrate every child: The very same world that is raising a hue and cry of the rights of children and related issues is also fighting for the right to abortion, in the name of right to choice! What an irony! The attitude of celebrating children should come from the fact that children are a wonderful gift from God, they are a sign that God is forever in love with the world and the humanity! Every child is a gift to be celebrated. 

2. Let us nurture our children: Nurturing our children does not mean pampering them; it is a great task and responsibility given to us parents and elders to nurture them to the fullness of their life - it means we give them everything they need to grow up with - not everything that the world says is important! The right values, the right orientations, the right priorities...how can we give these if we lack them ourselves? When we fail to give them a balanced growing ambient, we are actually ruining their life, in a sense, killing them! How important the role of a parent is! How much do we take care to learn that art, the art of parenting?

3. Let us learn from children: The children are not only at the receiving end, they have much to teach us too! We need to learn from their innocence, from their openness, from their capacity to trust and their innate sense of perceiving the divine! We, in the name of our rationality and our craving to prove ourselves right and superior, at times refuse to perceive the obvious signs of the divine around us and and fail to give a place of priority to God. May our children today teach us to remain children, children of the Most High. 

Let us celebrate children this day...it is actually a Church proposed CHILDREN'S DAY!!!