Today is the day for remembrance of the Holy Innocents. I don't remember precisely how old I was when my parents explained the story to me, only the nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. The story I'd heard before was a cheerful one, an amusing one, even, of how the Magi met with Herod, eventually found Jesus and worshiped him, and left town by another road so that Herod's nefarious plot was spoiled and tune in next week for the further adventures... You get the idea. Suddenly I was being faced with the grittier side of the story, the part about how Herod was so obsessed with his power that he ordered the slaughter of all the infant males in an entire city. Herod was so scared that he would be ousted from his throne at least fifteen or twenty years down the line that he had an entire male generation massacred. Infants who were just starting to open their eyes to the world, taking first steps and uttering first words, were mercilessly killed to appease the insecurity of a tyrant, in the name and stead of my Lord and Savior. It was a large and bitter pill to swallow. I turned to the lectionary for help, which it had trouble providing. The messages in the Old Testament, the Gospel, and the Psalms offer much in the way of wailing and gnashing of teeth, and only vague glimpses of hope. The epistle is what helped me through, with Revelation 21. I quote the paraphrase I know from Bairstow's arrangement that I learned in choir: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." I pray this night that God has wiped away the tears from their eyes, and that they may thrive in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal.