Holy Innocents

The Holy Innocents are the children of Bethlehem killed by order of King Herod, who wanted to do away with the newborn Jesus. The Church honors them as martyrs and keeps their feast on December 28, within the Octave of the Nativity of the Lord.

Their death is told in the second chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem and asked about the newborn king of the Jews, whose star they had seen. Herod was greatly troubled. From the chief priests and the scribes he learned that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. He secretly questioned the Magi about the time the star had appeared and sent them there, asking them to bring him word when they had found the Child, since he too wished to pay him homage.

The Magi found the Child and paid him homage. Warned in a dream, they did not return to Herod but went back to their own country by another way. Joseph, too, received an instruction from an angel in a dream: by night he took the Child and his Mother and fled to Egypt. When Herod saw that the Magi had deceived him, he became furious. He ordered the killing of all the boys in Bethlehem and the whole surrounding area who were two years old and under, in keeping with the time he had established by questioning the Magi. The Evangelist sees in this the fulfillment of the words of the prophet Jeremiah about Rachel, who weeps for her children and refuses to be consoled, because they are no more.

The Gospel gives neither the names of these children nor their number. Nor can the day or the year of their death be established. They could not confess the faith in words, and yet they died on account of Christ: it was he whom their killers were seeking. That is why the Roman Martyrology calls them the first fruits of all who would shed their blood for God and the Lamb, and the Collect of the feast says that they glorified God not by speaking but by dying.

The Holy Innocents have been venerated as saints since the first centuries, without a formal canonization. Since the sixth century at the latest, the Church has commemorated them on December 28; this day is already given in the Hieronymian Martyrology. Their feast is also kept by the Eastern Churches of the Syriac, Byzantine, and Coptic traditions. The poet Prudentius, who lived in the fourth century, called them the flowers of the martyrs. The bishop Saint Quodvultdeus said in a sermon that they cannot yet speak and already they confess Christ.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church sees in the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents a sign of the opposition of darkness to the light: the whole life of Christ was lived under the sign of persecution, in which his disciples also share.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy recalls that today, too, children suffer many forms of violence, and that on this day it is fitting to remember the children killed before birth. In many places this remembrance has given rise to prayers and works of charity: help for expectant mothers, support for adoption, and care for the education of children. On the feast of the Holy Innocents in 2016, Pope Francis asked the bishops in a letter to guard the innocence of children from the Herods of our time.