They cannot speak yet they bear witness to Christ

Treasures of Our Faith with Deacon Richard Vehige

Today, December 28, as our church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Innocents, we are invited to first read and reflect on a passage from the book of Exodus (1: 8-16,22), entitled “Slaughter of the Hebrew children in Egypt”. Our treasure, which follows, is from a sermon by Saint Quodvultdeus, bishop.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents, also known as Childermas, is celebrated in the Western Christian Churches on 28 December, the fourth day of Octave of Christmas. The Slaughter of the Innocents is a story recounted in the Nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew in which Herod the Great, king of Judea, orders the execution of all male children who are two years old and under in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Modern scholarship finds no evidence that it happened outside the passages in Matthew, though it is congruous with Herod's character.

Saint Quodvultdeus was a fifth-century Church Father and Bishop of Carthage who was exiled to Naples. His name literally means “what God wills” in Latin. He was known to have been living in Carthage around 407 and became a deacon in 421 AD. He corresponded with Augustine of Hippo, who served as Quodvultdeus' spiritual teacher. He acceded to the see in 432 or 433. Shortly after the Vandals seized Carthage in 439, their king Geiseric despoiled Quodvultdeus and placed him and a host of his fellow clergymen "naked on dangerous ships," according to Victor of Vita. Quodvultdeus arrived safely in Naples, where he spent the remainder of his life in exile. He died sometime before October 454, when Deogratias was ordained his successor. Soon after his death Quodvultdeus was honored as a saint and confessor in both Naples and Carthage.

The second book of the Pentateuch is called Exodus, from the Greek word for “departure,” because its central event was understood by the Septuagint’s translators to be the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Its Hebrew title, Shemoth (“Names”), is from the book’s opening phrase, “These are the names….” Continuing the history of Israel from the point where the Book of Genesis leaves off, Exodus recounts the Egyptian oppression of Jacob’s ever-increasing descendants and their miraculous deliverance by God through Moses, who led them across the Red Sea to Mount Sinai where they entered into a covenant with the Lord. Covenantal laws and detailed prescriptions for the tabernacle (a portable sanctuary foreshadowing the Jerusalem Temple) and its service are followed by a dramatic episode of rebellion, repentance, and divine mercy. After the broken covenant is renewed, the tabernacle is constructed, and the cloud signifying God’s glorious presence descends to cover it.

These events made Israel a nation and confirmed their unique relationship with God. The “law” (Hebrew torah) given by God through Moses to the Israelites at Mount Sinai constitutes the moral, civil, and ritual legislation by which they were to become a holy people. Many elements of it were fundamental to the teaching of Jesus as well as to New Testament and Christian moral teaching