Every history book is wrong. Let me explain.
Acts 12 tells the story of a king, two holy men, and the angel of the Lord. To win favor with the people, the king has one of the holy men killed. He arrests the second holy man, intending to kill him as well. But the angel of the Lord rescues the holy man from prison. Then, when the people said the king spoke like a god, the angel of the Lord struck him dead, because he did not give the glory to God.
Historians seek to describe the causes of decisive events. Some argue that great leaders are the essential force shaping history. Others argue that the masses of ordinary people are the driving force. Still others claim that impersonal factors like economics are most important.
Seeing with the eyes of Scripture, we can recognize that all of these are what Saint Thomas Aquinas called proximate causes. God is the ultimate cause of all things. Yet in His wisdom He gives his creatures freewill, and with that the ability to serve as proximate (or immediate) causes, for good or for ill.
King Herod thought he was in control of history, or at least to the extent that Caesar permitted him. He thought he could stamp out Christianity. He saw himself as a god. But God the Father was always in control. God gave Saint James, the son of Zebedee, the glory of being the first apostle to be killed for the faith. And God through His angel rescued Peter from the clutches of Herod, for Peter had more work to do leading the Church and winning souls for Christ. And God revealed the strength of His strong arm by slaying Herod in his pride.
God is always in control, even when we can’t see His handiwork or fathom His purposes. We can see God fulfilling His purposes through the story of salvation history in Sacred Scripture. The kingdom of the Herods effectively ended with the death of Herod Agrippa in 44AD. The Church built by Jesus upon the rock of Peter has endured for two thousand years and has spread, as Jesus foretold, to the ends of the earth. At times we see the hand of God at work in more recent history, such as the rescue of France through Saint Joan of Arc in the 15th Century or the defeat of communism through Our Lady of Fatima in the 20th Century. But we can also look at the news headlines on any given day and feel bewildered by what is happening and what is God’s purpose in all of these terrible events. We can however, place our trust in the Lord, knowing that He is in control even when we don’t see Him, and that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Notes:
1. There are four distinct king Herods in the New Testament, though three of them are referred to simply as King Herod. King Herod “the Great” ruled at the time of Christ’s birth and ordered the massacre of the Innocents. He was known to be a tyrannical ruler who murdered his wife and several of his sons; Augustus Ceasar wrote the it would be better to be Herod’s pig than his son, since the Jews did not eat pork. This Herod divided his kingdom between his three sons. One of these sons, Herod Antipas, had John the Baptist killed and interrogated Jesus on Good Friday. He was succeeded by Herod Agrippa, who killed the apostle James and then died suddenly from violent abdominal pains in 44 AD. He was eventually succeeded by Herod Agrippa II, whom Paul will meet in Acts 26.
2. Saint James is the only apostle whose death is recorded in Sacred Scripture
3. Luke does not provide precise details of when particular events in Acts took place, but because we can date the death of Herod Agrippa to 44 AD, we know that the first twelve chapters of Acts cover events that took place in the first 11 to 14 years of the Church.
4. An anonymous atheist blogger wrote a lengthy review of the life of Joan of Arc and concluded that her story is both very well-documented and very difficult to explain without reference to divine intervention. Catholic author Ross Douthat ponders why God might have intervened to save France.
Image: James the Apostle, detail of the mosaic in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, 6th century. Image by By © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120872924
Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day for the salvation of souls.
