(질문)

성교예규(서울대교구 전례위원회 엮음. 가톨릭출판사 발행) 51페이지 맨 끝줄의 ’치명하신 모든 성 영아여’에서 ’성 영아’의 뜻이 무엇인지 설명해 주십시오

(답변)

12월 28일은 무죄한 어린이들의 순교 축일입니다. 성 쿠옷불트데우스 주교의 강론에서

(Sermo 2 de Symbolo: PL 40,655) 우리는 무죄한 어린이들의 순교한 역사적 사실에 대하여 다음의 내용을 볼 수 있습니다. 우리가 연도를 바칠 때에 호칭기도 중에 나오는 ’치명하신 모든 성 영아’는 이러한 무죄한 어린이들이 순교한 죽음을 말하는 것으로 이해합니다.

..........

그들은 말할 줄 모르지만 그리스도를 고백합니다.

위대한 왕은 작은 아기로 태어나십니다. 동방 박사들은 멀리서 그분께로 인도되어 찾아와서 경배합니다. 말구유에 그분은 누워 계시면서도 하늘과 땅을 다스리시는 분이십니다. 그리고 동방 박사들이 이 위대한 왕의 탄생을 알리자 헤로데는 소동하여 자신의 왕좌를 잃지 않으려고 그분을 죽이려 합니다. 만일 헤로데가 그분을 믿었다면 현세 생활에서도 평온하며 내세 생활에서도 끝없이 다스렸을 것입니다.

헤로데여, 당신은 왜 왕의 탄생 소식을 듣고 두려워하오? 그분은 당신을 몰아내기 위해서가 아니라 마귀를 눌러 쳐이기기 위해서 오셨소. 그런데 당신은 이런 사실을 깨닫지 못하고 소동을 일으켜 잔인한 짓을 저지르고 있소. 그리고 찾고 있는 한 아기를 없애 버리기 위해 수많은 아기들을 잔인하게 죽이고 있소. 가슴을 치며 통곡하는 어머니들의 슬픔도, 자기 자녀들을 묻으러 가는 아버지들의 흐느낌도, 아기들의 신음 소리와 비명도 당신의 마음을 되돌리지 못하고 있소.

당신 마음속에 있는 두려움이 당신의 정을 이미 죽였기 때문에 당신은 어린것들의 육신을 죽이고 있는 것이오. 그리고 당신이 바라는 이 일이 성취되면 오래오래 살 수 있으리라 생각하면서 생명 자체이신 분을 죽이려하고 있소. 그러나 은총의 샘이시고 작은 아기이면서도 위대하시며 구유에 누워 계신 그분은 왕좌에 앉아 있는 당신을 공포로 떨게 하고 있소. 모르고 있는 당신을 통해서 그분은 자신의 계획을 성취하시고 영혼들은 마귀의 포로에서 해방시키셨소. 원수의 자녀들을 당신 자녀로 삼아 하느님 자녀의 반열에 받아들이셨소.

어린것들은 자기도 모르게 그리스도를 위해 죽어가고 그 들의 부모들은 죽어가는 순교자들을 보고 애곡하고 있소. 그리스도께서는 아무 말 못하는 그 아기들을 자신의 합당한 증거자로 만들고 있소. 세상을 다스리기 위해 오신 분께서 이렇게 다스리게 되셨소. 해방시키러 오신 분이 이제 해방시키시고 구원하러 오신 분이 이제 구원을 베풀고 있소.

그러나 이 사실을 모르는 헤로데여, 당신은 소동을 일으키고 잔인한 짓을 저지르고 있소.

그리고 어린것들에게 잔인한 짓을 저지르고 있는 동안 당신도 모르게 그분께 찬양을 드리고 있는 것이오.

오, 위대한 은총의 선물이여! 아기들이 누구의 공로로 그와 같은 승리를 거두었습니까? 그들은 아직 말을 못하면서도 그리스도를 고백합니다. 그들은 사지를 움직여 투쟁할 힘이 없는 아기에 불과하지만 벌써 승리의 월계관을 얻었습니다.

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A tiny child is born, who is a great king. Wise men are led to him from afar. They come to adore one who lies in a manger and yet reigns in heaven and on earth. When they tell of one who is born a king, Herod is disturbed. To save his kingdom he resolves to kill him, though if he would have faith in the child, he himself would reign in peace in this life and for ever in the life to come.

Why are you afraid, Herod, when you hear of the birth of a king? He does not come to drive you out, but to conquer the devil. But because you do not understand this you are disturbed and in a rage. To destroy one child whom you seek, you show your cruelty in the death of so many children.

You are not restrained by the love of weeping mothers and fathers mourning the deaths of their sons, nor by the cries and sobs of the children. You destroy those who are tiny in body because fear is destroying your heart. You imagine that if you accomplish your desire you can prolong you own life, though you are seeking to kill Life himself.

The children die for Christ, though they do not know it. The parents mourn for the death of martyrs. The Christ child makes of those as yet unable to speak fit witnesses to himself. But you, Herod, do not know this and are disturbed and furious. While you vent your fury against the child, you are already paying him homage, and do not know it.

To what merits of their own do the children owe this kind of victory? They cannot speak, yet they bear witness to Christ. They cannot use their limbs to engage in battle, yet already they bear off the palm of victory.

.................

THE HOLY INNOCENTS

Feast: December 28

(Matthew xi. 16)

Our Divine Redeemer was persecuted by the world as soon as he made his appearance in it. For he was no sooner born than it declared war against him. Herod, in persecuting Christ, was an emblem of Satan and of the world. That ambitious and jealous prince had already sacrificed to his fears and suspicions the most illustrious part of his council, his virtuous wife Mariamne, with her mother Alexandra, the two sons he had by her, and the heirs to his crown, and all his best friends. Hearing from the magians who were come from distant countries to find and adore Christ that the Messias, or spiritual king of the Jews, foretold by the prophets, was born among them, he trembled lest he was come to take his temporal kingdom from him. So far are the thoughts of carnal and worldly men from the ways of God, and so strangely do violent passions blind and alarm them. The tyrant was disturbed beyond measure and resolved to take away the life of this child, as if he could have defeated the decrees of heaven. He had recourse to his usual arts of policy and dissimulation, and hoped to receive intelligence of the child by feigning a desire himself to adore him. But God laughed at the folly of his short-sighted prudence, and admonished the magians not to return to him. St. Joseph was likewise ordered by an angel to take the child and his mother, and to fly into Egypt. Is our Blessed Redeemer, the Lord of the universe, to be banished as soon as born I What did not he suffer I What did not his pious parents suffer on his account in so tedious and long a journey, and during a long abode in Egypt, where they were entirely strangers and destitute of all succour under the hardships of extreme poverty I It is an ancient tradition of the Greeks, mentioned by Sozomen,[1] St. Athanasius,[2] and others, that at his entrance into Egypt all the idols of that kingdom fell to the ground, which literally verified the prediction of the prophet Isaiah.[3] Mary and Joseph were not informed by the angel how long their exile would be continued; by which we are taught to leave all to divine providence, acquiescing with confidence and simplicity in the adorable and ever holy will of Him who disposes all things in infinite goodness, sanctity; and wisdom.

Herod, finding that he had been deluded by the magians, was transported with rage and anxious fears. To execute his scheme of killing the Messias, the desired of all nations and the expectation of Israel, he formed the bloody resolution of murdering all the male children in Bethlehem and the neighbouring territory which were not above two years of age. Soldiers were forthwith sent to execute these cruel orders, who, on a sudden, surrounded the town of Bethlehem and massacred all the male children in that and the adjacent towns and villages which had been born in the last two years. This more than brutish barbarity, which would almost have surpassed belief had not Herod been the contriver and ambition the incentive, was accompanied with such shrieks of mothers and children that St. Matthew applies to it a prophecy of Jeremiah, which may be understood in part to relate more immediately to the Babylonish captivity, but which certainly received the most eminent completion at this time: "A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." Rama is a village not far from this town, and the sepulchre of Rachel was in a field belonging to it. The slaughter also was probably extended into the neighbouring tribe of Benjamin, which descended from Rachel. The Ethiopians in their liturgy, and the Greeks in their calendar, count fourteen thousand children massacred on this occasion; but that number exceeds all bounds, nor is it confirmed by any authority of weight. Innocent victims became the spotless Lamb of God. And how great a happiness was such a death to these glorious martyrs! They deserved to die for Christ, though they were not yet able to know or invoke his name. They were the flowers and the first fruits of his martyrs, and triumphed over the world without having ever known it or experienced its dangers. They just received the benefit of life to make a sacrifice of it to God and to purchase by it eternal life. How few perhaps of these children, if they had lived, would have escaped the dangers of the world which, by its maxims and example, bear everything down before it like an impetuous torrent! What snares, what sins, what miseries were they preserved from by this grace! With what songs of praise and love do they not to all eternity thank their Saviour, and this his infinite mercy to them! Their ignorant, foolish mothers did not know this, and therefore they wept without comfort. So we often lament as misfortunes many accidents which in the designs of heaven are the greatest mercies.

In Herod we see how blind and how cruel ambition is, which is ready to sacrifice everything, even Jesus Christ, to its views. The tyrant lived not many days longer to enjoy the kingdom which he feared so much to lose. About the time of our Lord’s nativity he fell sick, and as his distemper sensibly increased, despair and remorse followed him and made him insupportable both to himself and others. The innumerable crimes which he had committed were the tortures of his mind, whilst a slow imposthume, inch by inch, gnawed and consumed his bowels, feeding principally upon one of the great guts, though it extended itself over all the rest and, corroding the flesh, made a breach in the lower belly and became a sordid ulcer, out of which worms issued in swarms, and lice were also bred in his flesh. A fever violently burnt him within, though outwardly it was scarce perceptible; and he was tormented with a canine appetite which no victuals could satisfy. Such an offensive smell exhaled from his body as shocked his best friends; and uncommon "witchings and vellications upon the fibrous and membraneous parts of his body, like sharp razors, cut and wounded him within; and the pain thence arising overpowered him at length with cold sweats, tremblings, and convulsions. Antipater, in his dungeon, hearing in what a lamentable condition Herod lay, strongly solicited his jailer to set him at liberty, hoping to obtain the crown; but the officer acquainted Herod with the whole affair. The tyrant, groaning under the complication of his own distempers, upon this information vented his spleen by raving and beating his own head, and, calling one of his own guards, commanded him to go that instant and cut off Antipater’s head. Not content with causing many to be put to barbarous deaths during the course of his malady, he commanded the Jews that were of the principal rank and quality to be shut up in a circus at Jericho, and gave orders to his sister Salome and her husband Alexas to have them all massacred as soon as he should have expired, saying that as the Jews heartily hated him, they would rejoice at his departure; but he would make a general mourning of the whole nation at his death. This circumstance is at least related by the Jewish historian Josephus.[4] Herod died five days after he had put his son Antipater to death.

Parents, pastors, and tutors are bound to make it their principal care that children, in their innocent age, be by piety and charity consecrated as pure holocausts to God. This is chiefly to be done by imprinting upon their minds the strongest sentiments of devotion, and by instructing them thoroughly in their catechism. We cannot entertain too high an idea of the merit and obligation of teaching God’s little ones to know him, and the great and necessary truths which he has revealed to us. Without knowing him no one can love him or acquit himself of the most indispensable duties which he owes to his Creator. Children must be instructed in prayer and the principal articles of faith as soon as they attain to the use of reason, that they may be able to give him his first fruits by faith, hope, and love, as by the law of reason and religion they are bound to do. The understanding of little children is very weak, and is able only to discover small glimpses of light. Great art, experience, and earnestness are often required to manage and gradually increase these small rays, and to place therein whatever one would have the children comprehend.

The solicitude and diligence of parents and pastors to instruct others in this sacred science ought not to lessen; neither must anyone regard the function as mean or contemptible. It is the very foundation of the Christian religion. Hence Pope Paul III, in a bull in which he recommends this employment, declares that "nothing is more fruitful or more profitable for the salvation of souls." No pastoral function is more indispensable, none more beneficial, and generally none more meritorious; we may add, or more sublime. For under a meaner exterior appearance, without pomp, ostentation, or show of learning or abilities, it joins the exercise of humility with the most zealous and most profitable function of the pastoral charge. Being painful and laborious, it is, moreover, an exercise of patience and penance. Neither can anyone think it beneath his parts or dignity. The great St. Austin, St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril, and other most learned doctors, popes, and bishops applied themselves with singular zeal and assiduity to this duty of catechizing children and all ignorant persons; this they thought a high branch of their duty, and the most useful and glorious employment of their learning and talents. What did the apostles travel over the world to do else? St. Paul said, "I am a debtor to the wise and to the unwise.[5] We became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse would cherish her children; so desirous of you, that we would gladly have imparted to you not only the gospel of God, but even our own souls."[6] Our Divine Lord himself made this the principal employment of his ministry. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me: he hath sent me to preach the gospel to the poor."[7] He declared the pleasure he found in assisting that innocent age when he said, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, for the kingdom of God is for such. And embracing them, and laying his hands upon them, he blessed them."[8]