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Good Morning These holy days after Christmas all have a particular resonance for the Christian Church. St Stephen on 26th, St John yesterday and then today: undoubtedly the most difficult and challenging of them all – the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Today the Church remembers the actions of Herod in his jealous rage. As St Matthew exclusively recounts, by ordering the death of every young male child in and around Bethlehem Herod seeks to secure his own future by committing a terrible act. The story has strong parallels in Judaism of course: Pharaoh similarly orders the death of all the youngsters in search for the child Moses. So this is a difficult day in the midst of the celebrations of the Christ Child who is proclaimed as prince of Peace. How do you reconcile any kind of faith in a loving God when innocent children are being slaughtered? To be honest, it’s one of those questions which I have had most difficulty with myself – coming, as I do, from a non-church going background. I found faith later in life. Suddenly such faith kind of made sense of many complex questions and mysteries which I had previously grappled with. It was always a good starting point. But innocent children? This was something else. Rarely a day goes by without us hearing of the holy innocents of our own day who are subject to terrible abuse, suffering and death and of course we struggle to come to terms with how to deal with this well and how faith possibly fits in? To be honest, in the darkness of such situations the ability of our fellow humans to find their way never ceases to amaze me. Remember, just a few days ago, Dr Jim Swire who lost his daughter 25 years ago in the Lockerbie bombing. Still grieving for his daughter Flora, he urged the congregation in Westminster Abbey: “pray for all those who wrestle with hatred, that they may be healed by God's love.” Similarly, after their son, Tim, was killed in the IRA bombing in Warrington Colin Parry and his wife Wendy founded the Tim Parry Jonathan Ball Foundation for Peace and created their unique Peace Centre in Warrington. Two examples surely of how today’s feast of the holy innocents is reflected in these contemporary parables of holiness emanating through the words and actions of the afflicted -even having endured such violence evil against their loved ones. The Feast of the Holy Innocents is one of the days that many Christians hardly acknowledge, perhaps because it is too uncomfortable. AND YET today is profoundly one of those days when human ability to bring real light out of painful darkness shines through and offers hope. Perhaps that speaks for itself.