On the Fourth Day of Christmas is the Feast of the
Holy Innocents. We are reminded that every person, however innocent–or not–is
holy. This is a notion that came alive with the coming of Jesus. And, in the light of Jesus, the suffering of any person cannot be excused
or ignored.
Christ was born into a society we can hardly
imagine . . . in which any notion of the sanctity of every life was completely
alien; some were born only to die–handicapped children, girl children in some
places, exposed on hillsides to starve or freeze; slaves who existed to serve
every passing desire of their masters and mistresses; outsiders, foreigners,
who were not really human; gladiators whose job it was to kill or be killed for
public amusement. It’s not– let us be clear–that human behaviour has improved
so spectacularly since the first Christmas that we can look back on these
atrocities with complacency. A country with our current rates of abortion cannot
afford to rest on it ethical laurels; there is effective slavery among the poorest
of our world; civilized societies have started flirting once again with the
idea that torture might be acceptable. It is not that we have left Roman-style
inhumanity entirely behind; what has changed is that no-one now could possibly
take these things for granted without coming up against a challenge from most
of the main imaginative and moral currents [indelibly shaped as they are by the
memory of Jesus] of our Western and Middle Eastern cultural history.
– Rowan Williams, ‘Choose Life, Christmas and Easter Sermons in Canterbury Cathedral’
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