Homily Two on the Sunday After the Nativity of Christ
(when it falls on December 29th)
By St. John of Kronstadt
(when it falls on December 29th)
By St. John of Kronstadt
"A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamentation, weeping, and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more"
(Matt. 2:18; Jer. 31:15).
The Holy Church now honors the memory of fourteen thousand infants slaughtered by King Herod in Bethlehem and its environs. This bloody event was predicted 500 years ago by the Prophet of God Jeremiah in these words: "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." By Ramah or Arimathea is meant the whole area stained with the blood of infant martyrs, and by Rachel, who was the wife of the Patriarch Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, are meant all the mothers from whom infants were torn away by Herod's executioners and slaughtered. A terrible, inhuman spectacle! This is what man is brought to by his unbridled passions, his self-love, pride, ambition, lust for power, malice, envy!
And generally speaking, what atrocities has the earth, this abode of the human race, not been filled with during its almost eight thousand years of existence! History reveals to us terrible pictures of terrible atrocities in ancient and modern times. In our times, the atrocities of the Turkish Muslims against Christian children, fathers and mothers are still fresh in our memory. O earth, earth, soaked in human blood, filled with indescribable atrocities, until how long will you cry out to God for vengeance on the villains? Until how long will you stand and not be subjected to fiery purification? Until God's truth gives final retribution to the villains who have stained their hands with the blood of so many and such victims of inhumanity? But the truth of God assures that the blood of all the righteous will soon be required, beginning with the blood of Abel, and begs us who are impatient to be patient a little longer (Rev. 6:11).
But when I speak of Herod's murder and murders in general, which have filled the whole earth with horrors, I recall the spiritual murder of which we are all more or less guilty; this is the murder by each of us of our own soul, and often of our own body by our sins, or the murder of the souls of our neighbors by temptation, or by teaching others to sin. Who among us is not guilty of this spiritual murder? Who among us is free from passions, sinful habits and inclinations? Who has not killed his own soul or the soul of his neighbor by self-love, or pride, or wickedness, or lies, or envy, or gluttony, overeating, drunkenness, or avarice and stinginess, or hard-heartedness, or fleshly impurity, or anger, or suspicion, or partiality, or laziness and negligence about salvation, unbelief, etc.? Thus, my brethren, we continually kill our own souls or the souls of our neighbors by countless sins and by neglecting to correct our hearts, our lives, our morals. And this spiritual or psychic murder, by which we kill our souls, created in the image of God, is even more guilty than physical murder; because here the soul is killed, which is to live forever and ever, but there only the body, which will rise again at the general resurrection.
The souls of the infant martyrs, slain by Herod, all rest in the bosom of Abraham, are comforted in the Kingdom of Heaven, and in due time their bodies will also rise again, but Herod's soul is in eternal torment, and Herod, having slain the innocent infants, killed his own soul with his shameful passions even before their slaughter, and soon after his body, which experienced terrible torments before his death. And so let us not be murderers of our souls, these priceless souls, redeemed by the infinitely dear sacrifice of the blood of the Son of God - let us revive and preserve them, adorn them with repentance and virtue.
And what can we say about the murderers and suicides of our time? This is a terrible sign of the age, a terrible time of unbelief, depravity, falling away from God. Murders and suicides are frequent everywhere, and human life is valued as nothing; it has become so petty, empty, insignificant, pointless! But what can we say about the regicides, who in their madness attempt the most precious life of the kings of the earth themselves? If it is terrible and inhuman to kill an ordinary person, then to kill the Tsar, the head of state, the father of millions of subjects, the patron of the Church of God, for whom she always prays with the greatest love and motherly care - day and night, may the Lord hasten to Him in everything and subdue every enemy and adversary under His feet - to attempt on the life of the Tsar is the most disgusting crime, and whoever touches him touches the apple of God's eye. Our Russian ancestors always revered their Tsars as God's anointed, and were ready to endure everything, every disaster, rather than raise a bold and sacrilegious hand against their Tsar. And rightly so. According to Scripture: "The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water, he turns it wherever He wishes" (Prov. 21:1). "Do not touch My anointed ones" (Ps. 104:15), says God.
And so let us not kill our souls with our sins, let us revive them through fervent repentance, if we have killed them, while we still have time for repentance, and let us always have an aversion to the very thought of murder and suicide; let us have an aversion to people attempting regicide. God alone is the Lord of life and death; He alone has the power to kill and to give life. The Sovereign is our shield, the guardian of our safety, as of the whole Russian land, the faith and the Orthodox Church, and in particular the guardian of the safety and peace of each of us. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
