What was it about that night that drew Nicodemus to Christ? What was so special about that night that gave Nicodemus the courage to go to Christ alone even though he was a Pharisee? Also, was it merely the fact that Nicodemus wanted to hide the fact that a Pharisee was going to meet with Christ? Or is it the fact that Nicodemus desired to have a one on one encounter with the Lord? For throughout the Gospels, Christ was always surrounded by crowds of people, or at the very least His 12 disciples. Therefore, at this moment, Nicodemus found the perfect time to be with the Lord alone, which was in the middle of the night. Nicodemus must have been a follower of Christ for he would have known that this setting is very common with Christ, for Jesus often leaves the crowds and His disciples to be alone to pray to the Father. Christ being alone in prayer is a fairly regular occurrence in the Gospels; for example, the Garden of Gethsemane. Yes, Christ takes Peter, James, and John to the Garden, but He leaves them to pray in seclusion. So, one could assume that Jesus did this often enough throughout His earthly ministry. Therefore, this is why Nicodemus decided that he would visit Jesus when Christ was going off to be alone to pray to the Father.

If I were to ask “where is your head”, how would you respond? Would you give me the obvious answer and point to that thing attached to your neck? Or would you ponder at how this question is inappropriate especially because we remember the beheading of St. John the Baptist today? How many of us would point to our hearts or, more specifically, to Christ Who dwells within our hearts? As a small tangent, one thing you learn during Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is that if you can take control of someone’s head, then you can control the whole person. Meaning, if you grab someone by the head and move it, the body will follow. So I must ask again, “where is your head?”

Today we remember a terrible event within the Gospels; two days after Christmas, the Church remembers the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents. This gruesome Bible passage is only found in St. Matthew’s Gospel. It is said that this event was so terrible that St. Luke, the Evangelist who offers the best historical account, just could not stomach this event and therefore skipped it altogether. One of the things that St. Matthew sets out to do is to show how the prophecies from the Old Testament were fulfilled, and therefore he shows how Jeremiah’s prophecy came to fulfill through this event.