The Holy Innocents

The Holy Innocents were the little children of Bethlehem and its neighborhood, two years old and under, whom King Herod, enraged that the Magi had not returned to reveal the whereabouts of the newborn King of the Jews, ordered to be put to death in the hope of destroying the infant Christ among them. Warned in a dream, Joseph had already fled with the Child and his Mother into Egypt, and so the Lord was spared, while these blameless children were slain in his place.

The Church has honored them from ancient times as martyrs — the flowers of martyrdom, in the words of an old hymn, cut down at the threshing of the storm on the very edge of dawn — for though too young to profess the faith in words, they died for Christ, giving their lives that his might be preserved. Celebrated within the joyful octave of Christmas on 28 December, their feast joins the innocence of the crib to the shadow of the Cross and holds them up as witnesses that belong wholly to the Lord.