Monday in the Christmas Season
The Holy Innocents, the Children of Bethlehem, Martyrs
Today the Church celebrates the feast of the Holy Innocents, the children of Bethlehem whom Herod killed in his attempt to destroy the infant Jesus.
After Jesus was born, wise men came from the East to Jerusalem. They asked where they could find the newborn king of the Jews. They had seen his star and had come to worship him.
Herod heard their question and was troubled. He summoned the chief priests and scribes to ask where the Messiah would be born. They named Bethlehem, the town from which the prophet had promised a ruler who would shepherd God’s people.
Herod then met the wise men privately. He learned when the star had appeared and sent them to Bethlehem. Herod instructed the wise men to search carefully for the child, then return and tell the king where they had found Jesus. He claimed that he too wanted to worship the child.
The wise men found Jesus with Mary his mother. They knelt before him and offered their gifts. But God warned them in a dream not to return to Herod, and they went home by another road.
An angel then appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him that Herod would search for the child in order to kill him. The angel told Joseph to take Jesus and his mother and flee to Egypt.
Joseph rose in the night, took the child and Mary, and departed.
When Herod learned that the wise men had not returned, he was enraged. Using the time he had learned from them, he ordered the killing of all the boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding country who were two years old and younger.
The king’s men carried out his command.
Matthew wrote that Jeremiah’s words were fulfilled in what happened at Bethlehem: Rachel, one of Israel’s matriarchs, wept for her children and refused consolation because they were gone.
The Church remembers the children whom Herod’s violence had taken. We honor them as martyrs because the hatred directed against Christ fell upon them. Their fellowship with him rests in the mercy of the Savior, who entered the suffering of his people and would himself endure a violent death.
Rachel’s lament belongs within the Church’s Christmas worship. Before the child who shared our life, let us name those for whom we grieve and renew our care for those whose lives have been entrusted to us.
Let us pray
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.