On Nov. 19, 2008, a renowned archeologist, Dr. Ehud Netzer, held a historic press conference at the prestigious Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Professor Netzer is a world-class researcher and leading expert on the life and times of ancient Judea – especially around the time of Christ.

As Dr. Netzer spoke, the room fell silent. Cameras focused, not on him, but upon the pieces of a mysterious rose-colored stone coffin – a sarcophagus – that had been placed next to him and his excavation team.

With confidence and pride, Netzer asserted that this was the burial box that once contained the mortal remains of that fearsome ruler who governed the Holy Land at the time of Jesus’ birth – the sarcophagus of King Herod the Great.

Professor Netzer’s research has provided detailed information on the despot tetrarch who governed Judea with fear and violence for six long decades. His findings have also shed considerable light on the culture and society in which Christ lived, and has presented a dramatic study in contrast between two kings – the tyrannical Herod and Christ the King.

Jesus lived his entire earthly life in the long and dark shadow of King Herod and his dynasty.

Herod and his sons ruled with violence. He ordered the execution of his own wife, Mariamne, in a fit of jealous rage. He killed his mother-in-law and brother-in-law, fearing that they too were plotting against him. In 7 B.C., he ordered the strangulation of his two sons and arranged for the “accidental” drowning of a nephew whom he feared was lusting after the throne. St. Matthew reported that Herod ordered the massacre of all baby boys under two years old in Bethlehem, fearful that an infant king had been born as a rival to his power.

By contrast, Christ heralded and embodied the love of God, inviting but never coercing, welcoming but never forcing his way into our hearts and lives.

Herod’s appetite for opulence and extravagance was reflected in a complex of elaborate buildings uncovered by Netzer and his fellow excavators over the past several years. Palaces, country clubs, villas, hippodromes, theatres and temples were underwritten through taxes exacted from the income of ordinary citizens and the booty of foreign conquests.

The Son of God was born in a humble manger setting, and lived out his public life with “nowhere to lay his head.”

Pope Benedict writes that in Jesus, “we see the defenselessness of God’s love; no barrier of superiority or distance separates us … God comes to us unarmed because he does not intend to conquer us externally, but rather to win us over and transform us internally.” The Pope continues, “Herod could not possibly understand the significance of Jesus’ birth, for he was blinded by a thirst for power and a mania for persecution.”

Herod’s ways are the polar opposite of the ways of God who “casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly.” In taking human flesh, Christ gave a new sense of worth and dignity to every person. From the moment of his birth, he aligned himself with the poor and humble, walking among the least, last and lowly of the world. In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Benedict writes, “God made himself visible in Jesus, and love of neighbor is the path that leads us to encounter with God.”

The Church is obliged to follow in the footsteps of the Lord himself and take up the cause of the poor and humble in every generation.

In the mind of Christ reflected in Catholic social teaching, all people are made in the image and likeness of God. All have God-given dignity and worth. No exceptions.

This is why the Church must never grow weary of defending the voiceless and vulnerable. This is why the Church must preach uncomfortable messages that go against the prevailing winds of contemporary culture.

This vision, grounded in the Gospel, compels us to take up unpopular causes and to defend the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death. This vision causes us to renew our commitment to defend the unborn, counter the death penalty, seek to defeat physician-assisted suicide, and stand in solidarity with the poor and needy across the globe.

On Jan. 22, we observe the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. During this week I urge pastors to include prayers for the unborn and consider preaching on the vision of Catholic social teaching that the Church holds so dear.

In the words of Dorothy Day, “God made heaven hinge on the way we act toward him in his disguise of commonplace, frail, ordinary humanity.”


Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 25, No. 1, January 23, 2009.