The Holy Innocents

The feast begins with Herod the Great, alarmed when the Magi asked for the newborn King of the Jews. After the wise men were warned not to return to him and Joseph was warned in sleep to flee with Mary and the Child into Egypt, Herod struck at Bethlehem and its borders, killing the little boys under two years old. The swollen numbers that tradition sometimes repeated need not be followed; Bethlehem was small, and the point is not arithmetic but meaning: these children were the first victims because Christ had come into the world.

They did not confess Him with their lips, yet they died in the place of the Savior whom Herod sought to destroy, and so the Church has long honored them as martyrs. The old liturgical tenderness of the feast remains in view, with mourning still present even while the Innocents are greeted as the first flowers of the martyrs around the newborn Christ.