Daily Meditation for December 28, 2022

Today the Church commemorates the murder of innocent male children, killed only because King Herod thought one of them could be the son of Mary of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem during the census he had ordered. Children and women have always suffered most from violence in our world. She was perhaps six years old. She walked into the clothing room at our welcoming center in Laredo, Texas. Hair matted and nose running, she asked for a pair of shoes “without strings” because she said, if she and her mother were caught again, they would be sent back to jail where “they would take the strings and maybe the shoes.” We found slip-on tennis shoes about her size. Then, I tried to convince her that she had NOT been in jail but in a waiting place called detention. I told her she had not done anything wrong. She and her mom were rightfully searching for safety. Innocents of our own times.

By Judy Kramer, OSB