The number attending the 2008 Feast of the Holy Innocents Retreat was down this year, with no more than five present at any given time during the first two days of the retreat. All five were previous attendees. Since none of us were free to cross the line this year, rather than hold nonviolence training and line crossing planning sessions, we spent more time reflecting and praying on the scriptures, the Christmas season, and the sad times in which we live.
We broadened our scriptural study of the infant narratives to both the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and we watched "Eclipsing Empire: Paul, Rome and the Kingdom of God," an educational video with New Testament scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. The video program is presented in twelve twenty-minute sessions and traces the Apostle Paul's journey throughout the Roman Empire while it explores Paul's message of the Kingdom of God, its challenge to Roman imperial theology, and the apostle's radical relevance for our times. It helped us connect the dots between the Herod of Jesus's day and the Herods of today.
By Sunday morning, December 28, our number increased to thirteen. Fr. Jack McCaslin celebrated a 10 a.m. Mass for us in the small chapel in the basement of St. John's Parish on Creighton University's campus. After Mass we headed for the main gate at Offutt AFB and STRATCOM where two others joined us. The fifteen of us sang Christmas carols and read aloud Mathew's Christmas story with its account of Herod's killing of the innocents. As we recalled this crime against humanity revealed in this first Christmas story, we also were bearing witness to the crimes against humanity perpetrated every day, in every corner of the world by a multitude of Herods, most of them U.S. agents, backed up by STRATCOM, the U.S. Empire's Global Strike Command.
This years observance was particularly pointed and painful because as we gathered at STRATCom's main gate we were mindful of the killing of the innocents in the land of Jesus' birth that is today called Gaza. This time the heir of King Herod, the State of Israel, is doing the bidding of yet another super power, the United States.
Today when the innocent are killed in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza we attempt to camouflage our criminal acts behind the abstractions of terms like "collateral damage." But, call it what we will, the Herods of the world are still very much with us, killing the innocents in our name. God help us!
Frank Cordaro
Phil Berrigan CW House
713 Indiana Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50314
(515) 282-4781
Feast of the Holy Innocents Retreat 2008
For more info on the program "ECLIPSING EMPIRE: PAUL, ROME AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD" watch the video below.
The two videos below are parts one and two of independent coverage of the action by Queen Mab Productions, which produces a local access television program in Omaha and has no formal affiliation with this event.
For more information, contact the producer:
Marguerite Paterson <blackoutomaha@cox.net>
