December 28, The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
The eternal struggle between the good and the evil
When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his other by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod …. When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under. . Mt 2,13-18
Every day, flipping through the pages of the newspapers, we are struck by the incessant struggle of the forces of the good and of the evil which, within the narrated events, fight such as opposing armies in battle. And the battlefield is the man. On the one side, forces which want to eliminate, suppress, destroy the life, on the other side people who want to defend, food, save. On the one side people kill, on the other they donate the organs; on the one side people sell drugs, on the other communities are born for the rehabilitation from the drugs; on the one side abortion is procured, on the other children are adopted. In the today’s gospel passage this dynamic assumes theological dimensions: Jesus is born in Bethlehem and he will be killled on the Calvary to rescue and save the man from his sin and his limits. This divine strategy is also clear to the forces of the evil which, from the outset, are burst forth to combat it by all means, because they want that the man is subjugated, enslaved and crushed by the sin. This constant struggle between the forces of the good and the evil brings to the light a great mystery, which the revelation explains as depending from the original sin at the beginning of the times. In fact, the reality that the evil is inherent to the man is also evident in the child who begins to speak, whose first words, along with those of ”daddy” and ”mammy” are ”no” and “mine”. Among our many children there was no one who, when beginning to speak, would have said, “yes” “your ” or “our”! No one. Their battle cry was always “no!” or “mine!”. However, despite the biblical revelation and the many daily confirmations, a mystery remains: why the forces of the evil have rights over the man? … To this question there is not, in our opinion, a complete answer, but only one certainty: above the good and the evil there is God, who operates continuously so that the good will triumph over the evil. The fact that in the today’s gospel, the Lord has sent an angel to speak, in a dream, to Joseph, to enlighten him on how to rescue Jesus, is the certainty that God supports those who fight on the side of the good. And this is enough for us.