‘The children of fallen service members run in a 5k race every year to honor their parents, who gave their lives in service to this country. Military members are paired up as training mentors with the runners in the annual Memorial Day race just outside of Seattle, Washington.’
Watch it all.
Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater — it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.
I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. Every fairy tale we tell has at it’s root a core element of the ultimate story but the thing which makes the gospel so compelling is that it like a fairy tale sounds too good to be true but unlike a fairy tale is true.
“It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien on Fairy Stories, cited by yours truly on this past Sunday’s Pentecost sermon.
JRR Tolkien, 1911 pic.twitter.com/7bjctLoHgX
— Chris Mason (@mason4922) May 23, 2021
Prof. Carol Zaleski’s recent lecture for the Thomistic Institute at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara — “C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien: Faith and Reason in a World under Siege” — is now available on our podcast.
Listen on Spotify, SoundCloud or Apple Podcasts! pic.twitter.com/MQAtgYBVkO
— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) April 8, 2021
When China’s government ordered women in her mostly Muslim community in the region of Xinjiang to be fitted with contraceptive devices, Qelbinur Sedik pleaded for an exemption. She was nearly 50 years old, she told officials. She had obeyed the government’s birth limits and had only one child.
It was no use. The workers threatened to take her to the police if she continued resisting, she said. She gave in and went to a government clinic where a doctor, using metal forceps, inserted an intrauterine device to prevent pregnancy. She wept through the procedure.
“I felt like I was no longer a normal woman,” Ms. Sedik said, choking up as she described the 2017 ordeal. “Like I was missing something.”
Across much of China, the authorities are encouraging women to have more children, as they try to stave off a demographic crisis from a declining birthrate. But in the Xinjiang region, China is forcing them to have fewer, tightening its grip on Muslim ethnic minorities and trying to orchestrate a demographic shift that will diminish their population growth.
1. NEW: In China, the govt is trying to assert control over every aspect of life for Muslim women in Xinjiang. Their minds. Their homes. Even their wombs.
“The women of Xinjiang are in danger,” one woman said. “The government wants to replace our people." https://t.co/bVk1xQYhJW
— Amy Qin 秦颖 (@amyyqin) May 10, 2021
Every child in a Church in Wales School in north-east and mid Wales is to receive a gift from the Bishop of St Asaph to celebrate the work of the Welsh Bible Translators, more than 400 years ago.
It is part of plans by the Diocese of St Asaph to mark the 400th anniversary of Edmund Prys’ 1621 translation of the Psalms into Welsh suitable for congregational singing. Prys and seven out of the eight Bible Translators were born in the Diocese of St Asaph and are commemorated by a memorial outside St Asaph Cathedral.
In partnership with the Pocket Testament League UK, a charity which promotes the distribution of St John’s Gospel, the Bishop of St Asaph has commissioned a bespoke edition of the Gospel in Welsh and English to be given to all 6,000 church school pupils. The book includes an introduction from the Rt Revd Gregory Cameron and information explaining the importance of the Bible translators.
Bishop Gregory said, “Christians believe that the Bible contains God’s message to humanity, summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. The translation of the Bible into Welsh is a remarkable story of how people can achieve something great through their joint commitment and their desire to make the story of Jesus known more widely. The story of the translation is very much part of our story too, as it is rooted here in the diocese of St Asaph.
Campaigners are set to have a review of abortion law relating to Down’s syndrome heard at the High Court.
Heidi Carter, of Coventry, and Máire Lea-Wilson from Brentford, west London, are challenging the government over a clause in the current law which allows abortion for up to birth for a foetus with Down’s syndrome.
Mrs Carter, 25, who has the condition, said the current law is “not fair”.
The case is due to be heard on 6 and 7 July.
Currently, there is a 24-week time limit for abortion, unless “there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped” .
Mrs Carter, who campaigns under her given name of Crowter, previously wrote to Health Secretary Matt Hancock saying all non-fatal disabilities should be subject to the same standard 24-week limit.
Down's syndrome: Abortion case heads to High Court https://t.co/dmEq9EoiJt
— BBC Midlands Today (@bbcmtd) May 4, 2021
O Lord, who through spiritual discipline didst strengthen thy servant Monnica to persevere in offering her love and prayers and tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine their son: Deepen our devotion, we beseech thee, and use us in accordance with thy will to bring others, even our own kindred, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever.
Today is the feast day of St Monica. Below is a prayer I’ve come to use. I first encountered it in @james_ka_smith’s book On the Road with Saint Augustine. pic.twitter.com/iKaN6VfWj0
— Joel J Miller (@joeljmiller) May 3, 2021
Bishops’ powers will be passed to trained “diocesan safeguarding officers”, who will be able to make decisions “independently of clergy” and will be supervised centrally.
The church said that bishops still have an “important role to play” in promoting the importance of child protection policies, but added that they “should not hold operational responsibility” for decisions about abuse cases.
The church also gave its backing to the creation of an independent body to oversee the work of its national safeguarding team, which will be the first time that an external watchdog has been set up to police abusive priests.
It will consist of a board with a “majority of entirely independent members” to provide “independent scrutiny and feedback”.
Independent watchdog to police abusive priests | News | The Times https://t.co/8S7j9PM7Gq
— Alan Collins (@abuse_justice) March 30, 2021
The Church of England has…published its detailed responses to the recommendations of the IICSA report from October. As the report stated, the Church of England failed to protect some children and young people from sexual predators within their midst. While the Church will continue to apologise, the main focus is now recognising the distress caused particularly to victims and survivors and acting to improve its safeguarding structures and to change its culture.
Patti and Bruce, feeling a tug from Jesus, welcomed a four-year-old foster child into their home. Originally the child welfare organization told them Jonathan would be staying with them and their four other children for about a month. Five months later, after a couple of attempts to place him back with his mother, he’s still living with Patti and Bruce.
The process has been messy and complicated. This little boy is sweet, charming, and winsome at times, but angry and confused at other times. So sometimes he cuddles and hugs, but other times he acts out: yelling, scratching, hitting, and even biting.
My friends have loved this child, even as he tries their patience, even as they sometimes despair over the difficulties his birth family faces: poverty, illness, and so on. When they tuck him in at night, they ask him, “Jonathan, when God looks at you, what does he say?” And they have taught him to answer, “He says, ‘I sure do love that little boy!’”
When Jonathan first came to them he did not know the answer to the question. In fact, in his little four-year-old heart, perhaps Jonathan’s circumstances caused him to assume that if God even looked at him at all, God would have said “there’s a bad boy, so bad his mommy had to send him away.” But that is not true. And so Patti and Bruce have taught Jonathan to replace the lies with the truth. And the truth is, God sure does love that little boy.”
–Keri Wyatt Kent, Deeply Loved: 40 Ways in 40 Days to Experience the Heart of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012), pp.1-2, quoted by yours truly in the Sunday sermon
This past year has been one of the more difficult of our lifetimes. There has been much loss and much difficulty, but there have been some unexpected blessings as well. One of those blessings in disguise is the killing of church-as-usual and programs-as-tradition. It has caused us to think about why we do what we do.
This was a fruitful exercise because it can lay the groundwork for starting something new or evaluating something old and create a plan to start again. Twenty years ago, I led VBS because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do as a new kids pastor. I did it for about five years but didn’t get the buy-in or the traction that the effort required of me, my team, and our volunteers.
I’m also ashamed to admit that I fell into the school of thought that VBS was outdated; I was wrong! After a 12-year break, we started to do VBS again. Regardless of our opinions, most Americans are quite pro-VBS. Findings from Lifeway Research show that most (95%) American parents—regardless of how often they attend church—say their kids had a favorable experience at VBS.
The kids in your church and community need connection, discipleship, and hope more than ever. — @samluce https://t.co/nFOJNi02SE
— Lifeway Research (@LifewayResearch) March 15, 2021
Andrew T. Pavia, professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases, University of Utah:
Pavia is fully vaccinated and his wife, who teaches at the University of Utah’s business school, is about to get her second shot. To celebrate, he said, the couple are planning their first potluck dinner with two other couples, who will all be vaccinated in the next two weeks.
“We’re excited about that,” Pavia said. “Until now, we’ve always gotten together outdoors, and doing that in Utah in the winter means lot of layers of down.”
They’re also eagerly awaiting a reunion with their daughter for the first time in more than a year. She is a physician like her father, and also vaccinated. She’s flying to Salt Lake City from Cincinnati, but the Delta Air Lines flight is only two hours, and the middle seats are being left empty, he said. Even for the vaccinated, there are some risks associated with travel because they may be able to get asymptomatic infection and transmit that to others. But she is young, vaccinated and otherwise healthy, Pavia said, and faces a low risk.
Five health experts share how they’ve readjusted to life post-vaccination — and returned to some simple pleasures https://t.co/YvHGZLRa3z
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 10, 2021
This Harvard-Westlake parents’ group is one of many organizing quietly around the country to fight what it describes as an ideological movement that has taken over their schools. This story is based on interviews with more than two dozen of these dissenters—teachers, parents, and children—at elite prep schools in two of the bluest states in the country: New York and California.
The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.
“The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”
One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”
“I am in a cult. Well, that’s not exactly right. It’s that the cult is all around me and I am trying to save kids from becoming members.” He sounds like a Scientology defector, but he is a teacher at one of the most elite NY high schools. My latest: https://t.co/HDrWa7WFBT
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) March 10, 2021
As time has gone on, evidence has grown on one side of the equation: the harm being done to children by restricting their “circulation.” There is the well-documented fall-off in student academic performance at schools that have shifted to virtual learning, which, copious evidence now shows, is exacerbating racial and class divides in achievement. This toll has led a growing number of epidemiologists, pediatricians and other physicians to argue for reopening schools as broadly as possible, amid growing evidence that schools are not major venues for transmission of the virus.
As many of these experts have noted, the cost of restrictions on youth has gone beyond academics. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019. A study in the March 2021 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of people aged 11 to 21 visiting emergency rooms found “significantly higher” rates of “suicidal ideation” during the first half of 2020 (compared to 2019), as well as higher rates of suicide attempts, though the actual number of suicides remained flat.
The pandemic year has been brutal for young people. And it's been much tougher in some places than others. Here's my latest for @propublica, a story from a part of the country where the line between disruption and normalcy was drawn especially starkly. https://t.co/ECsTdsDHSp
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) March 8, 2021
These past six months have been more exhausting than any other period of my life. There are times when my alarm goes off and I have little desire to move. I want to lie in bed and wish the world away, but there are four kids who need me. So I smile, open my bedroom door and welcome the chaos. I wonder how often my mother felt the same way. I remember noticing the strain in her laughter when I was a child, and now I understand the source.
Simple activities are logistical nightmares. If child care happens only during your work hours, how do you find space for ordinary errands like buying groceries? You either pay for child care while you do it or you drag four children to the market. I now understand my mother’s extensive instructions before we entered the store not to touch or ask for anything.
I have a network of friends and church members who provide meals and rides to band, baseball and soccer practice. My dean and co-workers have been understanding when I have had to leave a meeting early or not attend at all. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed how lonely solo parenting is. I go to work, come home and care for the kids. My interactions with other adults without children present have become nonexistent.
Powerful piece by a working dad, solo parenting four children, by @esaumccaulley https://t.co/ggJFojoNTb
— Kate Kelly (@katekelly) March 1, 2021
Victoria Glosson’s viral video has more than 9 million views. The 22-year-old North Carolina woman told her father she was cancer-free.
When the locusts threatened the food security and livelihood of their neighbors, they stepped up.
“As part of the community, when the plague came to the neighboring counties and when we saw the devastation, we decided to coordinate the church members and mobilize the youths to help the farmers with their harvest,” says Pastor Solomon. “We believed it was better to do preventive work than rehabilitation. We also wanted to pass the message that we stand by them whenever they need support. It was the least we could do.”
Extraordinary Teens in #Ethiopia Help Farmers Save Crops During Locust Crisis | Compassion International Blog https://t.co/KQ332MmaO2 #children #awarenss #compassion #africa #agriculture
— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) February 15, 2021
“Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine recognized a car from an Amber Alert and took quick action — calling police and blocking the vehicle with their truck — to rescue a 10-year-old girl who had been kidnapped.”
Watch it all.
#OTD in 1709 @EpworthOld rectory, where 5 yr old John Wesley lived, caught fire. The family managed to escape, but John was trapped inside. A human ladder was formed to rescue him. All the family survived and Wesley truly was ‘a brand plucked from the burning’@MethodistHerit pic.twitter.com/u8qMGVmuuM
— Museum of Methodism (@museummethodism) February 9, 2021
WATCH: After sharing her story in a powerful Super Bowl ad, Jessica Long speaks with @LesterHoltNBC about her journey to becoming the second-most decorated Paralympian in U.S. history. https://t.co/Kng2IfvoJ1
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 9, 2021
Do take the time to watch it.
In 2015, Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor.
She considered conceiving through a fertility clinic, but the cost was prohibitive for her. Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, one of a growing number of online sperm markets that match candidate donors directly with potential recipients. Ms. van Ewijk was drawn to one profile in particular, that of Jonathan Jacob Meijer, a Dutch musician in his 30s.
Mr. Meijer was handsome, with blue eyes and a mane of curly blond hair. Ms. van Ewijk liked how genuine he appeared. “I spoke to him on the phone and he seemed gentle and kind and well-behaved,” she said. “He liked music, and he talked about his thoughts on life. He didn’t come on strong in any sense. He seemed like the boy next door.”
About a month later, after some back-and-forth, she and Mr. Meijer arranged to meet at Central Station, a busy railway hub in The Hague. He provided her with his sperm, and in return she paid him 165 euros, about $200, and covered his travel costs. Months later she gave birth to a daughter — her first child and, Mr. Meijer told her, his eighth….
Confronted by one mother. the donor admitted that he had produced at least 175 children and conceded that there might be more https://t.co/vMKEquoOen
— NYT Science (@NYTScience) February 2, 2021
Shaver and his colleagues recently published a paper exploring the effects of religious support on fertility and child development. They used ten years of data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which recruited over 14,000 pregnant women in England in the early 1990s to track ever since—on measures such as children’s lead exposure to number of illnesses to developmental ups and downs. From this data they tested how church attendance and social support affected family size and child development.
Unsurprisingly, they found that religious families had more children. They also found that, on the whole, the more siblings a child had, the shorter the child was and the lower his scores on state standardized achievement tests. This “tradeoff” falls in line with previous studies showing that larger family sizes dilute parental resources and affect child outcomes. But the finding didn’t hold for families with support from religious communities. In fact, Shaver and his colleagues found that religious support sometimes correlated with higher test scores.
These findings, Shaver wrote, suggest that religious communities overcome the tradeoffs between number of children and child success by sharing resources, a practice anthropologists call “alloparenting.” While the term is erudite, it’s something humans have done throughout history. Only in recent decades, as social and family connections have frayed, has it become less common.
A new study from grantee @johnhshaver and his team suggests that religious communities overcome the tradeoffs between number of children and child success by sharing resources. Read more in @ctmagazine: https://t.co/cCBG8UT78B
— John Templeton Foundation (@templeton_fdn) January 29, 2021
For those of us who are married and with kids, these micro-transformations are most of our life. We change diapers, play endless games of horsey with toddlers, teach our kids to read and write, ask our teen the questions that matter, and endure the wrath of the same teen when we limit their use of a digital device. We do this because we hope in a future in which truth, goodness, and beauty will be passed on not by us but by our progeny. After all, we will be very dead. But the pursuit of wisdom will continue through our children, who hand on the gift of life to their children, and so on until a future generation knows us exclusively because of a seventh-grade family history project on the part of our great-great-great-great granddaughter.
All of this may seem a strange way to deal with hookup culture and an increasing fear of procreation. But if hookup culture and the anxiety of introducing children into this world is about fear of the future, then we must uphold the gift of commitment, stability, and those small acts of love that no human being will recognize as an accomplishment worth fêting.
It is precisely through these micro-transformations that a future will be created that is marked by generosity and communion. In other words, a future in which everyone will introduce children into a world that is very good.
“What if religious and conservative higher education ceased speaking about marriage & family life as an accomplishment & began to treat marriage and children as that which enable human flourishing & a meaningful future?” A great essay from @timothypomalley https://t.co/noZg8j33Zr
— Alexandra DeSanctis (@xan_desanctis) January 16, 2021
“Flavaine Carvalho, sensing distress from an 11-year-old boy with his family, secretly flashed the boy a note asking him if he needed help. When the boy said yes, Carvalho called 911. The boy’s stepfather faces three charges of aggravated child abuse, and his mother faces two charges of child neglect.”
The Church of England’s Lead Bishop for Children and Families is supporting moves in the House of Lords today to introduce legal protections for children from being used in undercover operations by police and other authorities.
The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, is backing cross-party amendments to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill which is currently before the Lords for report stage.
Like we do every year, my parents took my brother and me to see “A Christmas Carol” on stage to get everyone into the Christmas spirit (which is no small feat at the end of November). The story is familiar and heartwarming, but the song they ended their production with struck me: “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Set to music a few decades later, this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was written over Christmas of either 1863 or 1864, in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history.
The carol is not cotton candy; it is a beating heart, laid bare in seven stanzas with simple language. At the second-to-last verse, I noticed dimly that I had begun to cry; by the end of the song, my face was wet with tears.
“And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’”
It isn’t quite right to call this a cynic’s carol, but in this verse it is a desperate and bitter one. It’s a carol from a man who has had the nature of the world uncovered before him. It’s one of the only carols that still rings true to me in 2018.
Like all good poets, with “Christmas Bells” Longfellow reached out across almost 155 years of history to take my hand.
“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.’”A Carol for the Despairing | Christianity Today https://t.co/coElaMNr26
— Robert Hendrickson (@FrRHendrickson) December 16, 2020
Lord Jesus, I thank You for the gift of this new day. When You came to earth for us, You grew as a child in wisdom and grace. As Lord, You received children in Your arms. You blessed them and said that Your kingdom belongs to them. Dear Jesus, receive me also on this day and hear my morning prayer. Bless my parents, teachers, and all those who love and care for me.
Bless me, also, and protect me from danger and evil. Give me strength to be truthful, honest, kind, and helpful to others. Guide me to grow as a member of Your kingdom. You are my Lord and King, and to You I give praise and thanks forever.
In the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, God reveals our true home. We’re to live as His children, “chosen ones, holy and beloved,” as the First Reading puts it. pic.twitter.com/Kr12Ib2qqK
— Catholic Church (@catholicEW) December 27, 2020
A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.
Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage, and to destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.
You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers or fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong your own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.
Yet your throne is threatened by the source of grace, so small, yet so great, who is lying in the manger. He is using you, all unaware of it, to work out his own purposes freeing souls from captivity to the devil. He has taken up the sons of the enemy into the ranks of God’s adopted children.
The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself. See the kind of kingdom that is his, coming as he did in order to be this kind of king. See how the deliverer is already working deliverance, the saviour already working salvation.
But you, Herod, do not know this and are disturbed and furious. While you vent your fury against the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.
How great a gift of grace is here! To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory.
Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Matt. 2:16:"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 …" Herod & his men from13th c. LPL MS 558. pic.twitter.com/Y7qShaHCEW
— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) December 28, 2020
I wonder if the popularity of the Coventry Carol today indicates that it expresses something people don’t find in the usual run of joyful Christmas carols – this song of grief, of innocence cruelly destroyed. The Feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas, as it was known in the Middle Ages) is not an easy subject for a modern audience to understand, and the images which often accompany it in medieval manuscripts, of children impaled on spears, are truly horrible. But they are meant to be; they are intended to disgust and horrify, and they’re horrible because they’re not fantasy violence but all too close to the reality of the world we live in. Children do die; the innocent and vulnerable do suffer at the hands of the powerful; and as this carol says, every single form of human love, one way or another, will ultimately end in parting and grief. Every child born into the world – every tiny, innocent, adorable little baby – however loved, however cared for, will grow up to face some kind of sorrow, and the inevitability of death. Of course no one wants to think about such things, especially when they look at a newborn baby; but pretending otherwise, not wanting to think otherwise, doesn’t make it any less true.
Medieval writers were honest and clear-eyed about such uncomfortable truths. The idea that thoughts like these are incongruous with the Christmas season (as you often hear people say about the Holy Innocents) is largely a modern scruple, encouraged by the comparatively recent idea that Christmas is primarily a cheery festival for happy children and families.
Today is Childermas Day, the feast of the Holy Innocents, on the fourth day of Christmas. It's an appropriate day for the Coventry Carol and other medieval lullaby-laments: https://t.co/KYr5ltY2ou pic.twitter.com/yYROD0Fbrw
— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 28, 2020