Feast of the Holy Innocents

Today is a feast day that shouts to the American holocaust. It commemorates the murder of the baby boys in Bethlehem by King Herod. When the wise men did not return to let him know where the Messiah was, he ordered his men to kill ALL the little boys under two years of age. This atrocity was not out of character for Herod. He was a butcher who even murdered his own son.

Bethlehem was a small town and modern writers believe fewer than a dozen babies under two actually died in the attack. The historian Josephus, who details a number of Herod's crimes, doesn't mention it at all. Despite the small numbers, to the families impacted it surely was a tragedy, but the event can't even come close to competing with the atrocity of abortion in our own day. As Mother Teresa said, if a mother can kill her own child what is left for us to do to one another. The mothers of Bethlehem wept and lamented the loss of their children. Many women today claim their abortions were liberating.

But there are the others, women who often years after killing their babies realize the immensity of what they have done. Like the mothers of Bethlehem they are "Rachels" weeping for their children who are no more.

Pray to the Holy Innocents today to intercede for an end to the world-wide holocaust of abortion and infanticide and for the mothers who weep for their babies.