Image: Massacre of the Innocents, Peter Paul Rubens
Memento mori: remember death. The last vestiges of colorful wrapping paper have not yet been whisked away by the garbage men. There is still leftover rib roast in the fridge. We have only just begun the octave of celebration of the Incarnation, the birth of the Christ child, and already we are confronted with the somber commemoration of Herod’s brutal murder of the little ones of Bethlehem.
For a Christian, life and death, celebration and sorrow, are ever inextricably intertwined.