The Holy Innocents

The shadow of the cross falls over the manger--Christ was, as the old hymn says, born for to die.  The shadow of the cross falls over us all.  We in the midst of the season of Christmas; in fact, we are in the Octave, where every day is celebrated as if it were Christmas Day.  So who do we celebrate, in the very center of that octave, the brutal death of innocent children? Surely it is a cause for sadness and not joy.


Even as a helpless baby, Christ threatened the powers of the world.  From the first moments of His life, there were those who rejected Him and plotted His death.  And nothing, least of all other innocent babies, would get in the way of Herod's--and the world's--efforts to get rid of Him.  John the Baptist lost his life because he proclaimed the coming of Christ.  St. Stephen lost his life for proclaiming the truth of Christ.  The Holy Innocents died simply because they resembled Him too closely.  They died not so much for Christ , as Stephen and John did, but in His place.  Thus the Church venerates them as martyrs.


Here is St. Augustine on the Holy Innocents ("birthday" refers to the day of death--the birth into heaven):

Today, dearest brethren, we celebrate the birthday of those children who were slaughtered, as the Gospel tells us, by that exceedingly cruel king, Herod. Let the earth, therefore, rejoice and the Church exult — she, the fruitful mother of so many heavenly champions and of such glorious virtues. Never, in fact, would that impious tyrant have been able to benefit these children by the sweetest kindness as much as he has done by his hatred. For as today's feast reveals, in the measure with which malice in all its fury was poured out upon the holy children, did heaven's blessing stream down upon them.

"Blessed are you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah! You suffered the inhumanity of King Herod in the murder of your babes and thereby have become worthy to offer to the Lord a pure host of infants. In full right do we celebrate the heavenly birthday of these children whom the world caused to be born unto an eternally blessed life rather than that from their mothers' womb, for they attained the grace of everlasting life before the enjoyment of the present. The precious death of any martyr deserves high praise because of his heroic confession; the death of these children is precious in the sight of God because of the beatitude they gained so quickly. For already at the beginning of their lives they pass on. The end of the present life is for them the beginning of glory. These then, whom Herod's cruelty tore as sucklings from their mothers' bosom, are justly hailed as "infant martyr flowers"; they were the Church's first blossoms, matured by the frost of persecution during the cold winter of unbelief.

— St. Augustine

The Holy Innocents also bring to mind the holocaust of abortion, the killing of innocents in our day and time.  Mother Teresa once said,  "It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."  The Holy Innocents died so that Herod could live as he wished--or so Herod thought.  The Holy Innocents, patron saints of  babies,  have been also proposed at patron saints of the aborted and those recovering from abortion.


We take some time from our joyful celebration of the birth of Christ to remember that a holy life also involves suffering, much of it undeserved.