The Holy Innocents
Christmas commemorates not just the birth of a divine baby, but the death of little ones — the young children under the age of two killed in Bethlehem by soldiers of King Herod, who feared a royal rival. If the Christmas narrative was the creation of fiction writers would they have included in the romance of Bethlehem this unsettling account of murdered children known so touchingly as the “Holy Innocents?”
There’s an important message in this incident:
“These infant Martyrs represent … what must in its measure befall everyone who draws near to Jesus. Suffering goes out of him, like an atmosphere. The air is charged with the seed of crosses, and the soul is sown all over with them before it is aware. Moreover, the cross is a quick growth and can spring up, and blossom, and bear fruit almost in a night, while from its vivacious root a score of fresh crosses will spring up and cover the soul with the peculiar verdure of Calvary. They that come nearest to our Lord are those who suffer most, and who suffer the most unselfishly,” Fr. Frederick Faber wrote in his great work, Bethlehem (Tan Books, p. 195).

