Selfishness At Its Worse
Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs
My dear encountered couples:
Narcissistic people, people who excessively care for themselves, can be dangerous. I am talking about people whose first goal in life is to see they get all they want out of life no matter how much it costs other people. We have a macabre example of that in today’s gospel about the killing of the children in Bethlehem.
King Herod, who had been visited by the astrologers, was shaken by the news of a baby they referred to as a king. Though it may have sounded preposterous to Herod at first, his counselors shook him up when they quoted a passage from the prophet Micah (5:1):
“And you Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”
Could this child these men on camels were talking about possibly be the king predicted by the prophet? This worried Herod?
So much so, that when the astrologers didn’t return with news of the newborn king, Herod sent his men to kill all the baby boys in Bethlehem “two years old and under, making his calculations on the basis of the date he had learned from the astrologers.”
The man was so turned in upon himself that he would do anything to keep his power. Let us seek nothing, let us grasp on to nothing at anyone else’s expense. For if we do, we just might, at least a little, be acting like a selfish, narcissistic King Herod.
