In the Octave of Christmas, there is no real chronology of the story of Jesus’ birth in the Church calendar. It can resemble the story line of a Quentin Tarantino film like Pulp Fiction in which the sequence of the story jumps all over. The stories of Christmas are all there, but the sequence is all mixed up.
Today, we jump from the stories of the Angels announcing the birth of Jesus to a grim, murderous event that occurs after the Epiphany. Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents, in which the Church venerates the memory of those children King Herod slaughtered in his search for the infant Jesus.
In the Gospel of Matthew, we hear the story of the Magi who were following the Star of Bethlehem. When they stopped, in modern parlance, to “get directions”, wisdom, and information from King Herod the Great and his intelligentsia about the birth of the “King of the Jews”, an enraged and fearful Herod ordered the slaughter of all male children in Bethlehem three years of age and younger. Joseph, warned in a dream of Herod’s murderous action, awakens Mary, and with their newborn infant, flee for safety in the middle of the night. Political refugees, they find asylum, ironically in of all places, Egypt, the place in which the Hebrew people had been cruelly enslaved by the ancient Pharaohs.
For this feast I present two piano songs to honor the memory of these innocent children cruelly slaughtered in front of their parents by the soldiers of King Herod the Great. However, I place these songs in the present political plight of migrant children and their parents in our nation and nations throughout the world.
In our present time, we are experiencing a similar event happening in our own nation. Admittedly, it is not as bloody, but it is as grim and as horrible as this massacre. It is the deliberate separation and imprisonment of refugee migrant children from their parents, ordered by our president and those in his administration. While the children may not be cruelly killed in front of their parents, the damage done to these children and their parents psychologically and emotionally is crueler. It is a long, lingering death that will haunt them the rest of their lives.
This abysmal situation has been condemned as an immoral act, tantamount to being a crime against humanity. Of course, this is not just isolated to the United States, but is endemic in many nations of our world. In his Christmas message, Pope Francis urged all nations to treat each and every refugee as if they were Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, who fled in terror from the cruelty of Herod the Great.
The first song, “A Migrant Mother’s Lullaby To Her Imprisoned Child”, was composed in the summer of 2018, when the immoral policies of our government were started to be put into action on our southern border. The song is based on this scripture passage from the Book of the prophet Jeremiah.
¹⁵ Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. ¹⁶Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy; ¹⁷ there is hope for your future, says the Lord: your children shall come back to their own country. (Jeremiah 31:15-17, NRSV)
This song is my prayer for the migrant parents separated from their children. May Jeremiah’s prophecy come true, and these children reunited safely into the arms of their parents.
The second song A Lament For the Migrant Children Imprisoned In The United States, is based on the following scripture passage from the book of Exodus in the Bible.
⁸ Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. ⁹ He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. ¹⁰ Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” ¹¹ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. ¹² But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. ¹³ The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, ¹⁴ and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. ¹⁵ The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ¹⁶ “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” (Exodus 1:8-16, NRSV)
We have seen the children, imprisoned in cages on our border. The conditions are abysmal, medical help often refused them. Their ages range from infants of a few months nursing at the breast of their mothers to those who are 16 years old. Imagine for just a moment the anguish, the terror, and the despair they are experiencing.
In the music there is a repeated melodic figure that is introduced at the beginning and continues throughout the music. Descending pitches, with a half note (2 beats) followed by a quarter note (1 beat) are a melodic representation of tear drops rolling down the cheeks of the children, dropping one tear at a time to the cement floor on which they lay. Think of sobbing, the kind of sobbing that racks the human body, that takes human breath away. Is this to be the legacy of our nation? My heart breaks.
I am proud that the Catholic bishops of our nation have come taken a rare prophetic stance these days and have condemned these policies of our present government. May the religious leaders of all religions follow in their condemnation, so that these families affected so cruelly, may be reunited and find healing, and our government agencies once more regain some honor and dignity.
Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! ¹¹ What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. ¹² When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; ¹³ bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. ¹⁴ Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. ¹⁵ When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. ¹⁶ Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, ¹⁷ learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. (Isaiah 1:10-17)
