Commontide
Liturgical Color: Red
The 4th Sunday in Advent
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and as we are sorely hindered by our sins from running the race that is set before us, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
Advent
Because you sent your beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life; that when he shall come again in power and great glory to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Martyrs
Red Letter Day
The children of Bethlehem, killed on Herod's order when the wise men did not come back to tell him where the child was. Matthew gives them three verses and no names, and no other ancient source records the killing at all. The Church has kept them since antiquity as martyrs who witnessed to nothing they understood, and has never agreed on how many they were or, in the end, minded.
Matthew 2:16-18 provides the sole biblical account. When the Magi failed to return to Herod with the location of the child, the king's paranoia—already legendary for its violence (Josephus records that he executed his own wife and three sons)—erupted against the children of Bethlehem. He ordered the killing of all male children aged two and under in Bethlehem and its environs, based on the timeframe established from the Magi's report of the star's appearance.
Matthew frames the slaughter as fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.' This prophetic connection links the suffering of Bethlehem's mothers to the perennial suffering of Israel and, beyond Israel, to all innocent suffering in history.
The Holy Family escaped because Joseph, warned by an angel in a dream, fled to Egypt with Mary and the child. The juxtaposition is theologically stark: Christ was preserved, but other children died. The feast does not resolve this tension but holds it—the mystery of innocent suffering coexisting with God's providential care for the Son.
Bethlehem was a small village—estimates of those killed range from a handful to perhaps twenty, depending on the village's population. The significance lies not in the numbers but in the atrocity itself. Herod's documented character, as recorded by Josephus, makes the massacre entirely plausible: the king repeatedly murdered perceived threats, including members of his own family. The Church has observed this feast on December 28 since at least the late fourth century, placing it in the Christmas octave alongside Stephen (December 26) and John the Evangelist (December 27).
Traditionally, the Holy Innocents have been venerated as the 'flowers of the martyrs' (flores martyrum)—Augustine's phrase—who testified to Christ not by speaking but by suffering and dying. They are the first martyrs in the Christian calendar, preceding Stephen the Martyr. Augustine and later theologians reflected on the paradox of innocent suffering: that these children died in ignorance, yet the Church honors them as witnesses to Christ. The liturgical color is red (for martyrdom) in most traditions, though some medieval uses employed violet to mark mourning alongside the martyr's crown.
Psalms 132, 133, 134, 135
Psalms 136, 137, 138