[Yesterday] was the day that the Church chooses for the feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs. The day in which the Gospel speaks to us of the killing of the innocents, ordered by Herod.
I want to join, to all the anonymous Holy Innocents, all those that were not permitted to be born and also all the children killed through mal-treatment.
With effort, God, Lord of Life, trusted humanity in order that they may could play, from a worthy way, the noble challenge of conserving life. This should, therefore, be safeguarded with extreme solicitude from the first moment of conception.
Abortion and Infanticide are abominable crimes!
The Church honors, as martyrs, this chorus of children, victims of the terrible and bloody king Herod, ripped from the arms of their mothers to write, with their own blood, the first page of the golden album of Christian martyrs who merit Eternal Glory, according to the promise of Jesus: “Whoever loses their life for love of me, will find it.”
For them, the Liturgy repeats today the words of the Poet Prudencio: “Hail, the flowers of Martyrs that at the dawn of Christianity were massacred by the persecutor of Jesus as a violent hurricane, pulling the roses barely bloomed!”
You were the first victims, the tender flock immolated. On the same altar you receives the palm and the crown.
The episode is narrated only by the evangelist Matthew, who directs principally to the hebrew readings, and, therefore, intended to demonstrate the Messianity of Jesus, in which is realized the ancient prophecies: “When Herod discovered that the wisemen had cheated him, they were furious. He sent to kill in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas all the boys of two years and under, conforming to the time that he determined from the words of the wisemen.”
It was thus that the words of the prophet Jeremiah were fulfilled: “In Ramah, is heard a cry, a bitter chorus, immense pain. It is Rachel crying for her sons and she does not want to be consoled, because they no longer exist.”
The origin of this feast is very old. It appeared already on the Carthagene Calender of the Fourth Century, and one hundred years later in Rome in the Leonine Sacramentary.
Today, with the new Liturgical Reform, the celebration has a joyful character and not much of the grief as it was in ancient days, and this in tune with the sympathetic medieval costumes that celebrated, on this day the feast of the Choir Boys and of the Service of the Altar.
Among these curious manifestations, we have that of the Canons descending from their places to the song of the verse: “Deposed the mighty from their thrones and exalted the humble.”
The new liturgy, although not wanting to stress the folkloric character that this day may have in the course of history, wanted to keep this feast which was elevated to that degree by St. Pius V, soon after the Feast of Christmas.
So, the innocent victims are put among the companions of Christ, to surround the manger of the Child Jesus with a gracious chorus of children, dressed in the candid robes of innocence, small vanguard of the army of martyrs that will testify with the blood, of their belonging to Christ. Yesterday, as with today, they continue the shouts and voices of the innocent children that already no longer exist. We must be their cry and their voice in our world.
Father Bantu Mendonça