A voice is heard in Ramah, lamenting and weeping bitterly: it is Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. -Jeremiah 31:15
Today, December 28, the Church remembers the “Holy Innocents” who lost their lives in Bethlehem shortly after Christ’s birth. Then it was all boys age two and under who were put to death at the hands of King Herod and his soldiers because of Herod’s fear of the prophecy of the Messiah. Now over 4,000 innocent children of both genders lose their lives every day in this country because of abortion and, much like the Holy Innocents of yesterday, the murder of today’s innocents is blessed by our Government. As we remember the Holy innocents of yesterday, perhaps we should also request their intercession and appeal to God’s mercy on behalf of the millions of innocents being slaughtered here and around the world today.
Universalis had a wonderful reflection on this feast today that says everything I could ever want to say about it myself:
There was nothing about those baby boys that made them deserve death. Look at any one of them, and you can see that he had no chance to do anything, or be anyone, or become anyone. He had done nothing. He had done nothing bad, he had done nothing good. He was born, and then he died, and that was all there was to him. So passive are these babies that some people find it hard to understand how they can share the title of “martyr” with people like St Stephen (the day before yesterday), who insisted on preaching the truth until his hearers stoned him for it, or St Thomas Becket (tomorrow), who insisted on living the truth until his king had him killed because of it. These children did not insist on anything except their mothers’ milk; and unlike Stephen and Thomas, there was no voluntary act of theirs that we can see as making the difference between being martyred and not being martyred.
So in our rational human terms these children are a puzzle, and that is one reason why God has inspired the Church to celebrate this very feast – to show us how inadequate our seemingly rational, worldly-wise thoughts are. As he reminds us again and again throughout salvation history, his thoughts are not our thoughts. Babies may not rank high on the scale as far as our human calculus is concerned; but then neither do sparrows, and yet God has told us that God sees and counts every one of those…
The feast of the Holy Innocents reminds us that in God’s eyes (that is, according to the true value of things), no-one is unimportant, no-one is unnecessary, no-one “doesn’t really matter.” However meaningless their lives and deaths may seem to us, they shine glorious in heaven.
On a more personal level, the honour given to the Holy Innocents reminds us that if we suffer or even die for God’s sake, it has value even if we have little or no say in it ourselves. Honouring them effectively honours also the martyrdom of the people these children could have become, and their children’s children as well; and at the same time we can remember the contemporary and continuing massacre of those who die before birth for the convenience of those who have them killed.
We rejoice in the glory of Jesus Christ, who conquered the enemy not by force of arms but with a white-robed army of children! -Lauds 12/28
**image of ‘Slaughter of the Innocents’, Duccio di Buoninsegna