Holy Innocents

The Gospel of Matthew tells how Herod the Great, having learned from the Magi that the king of the Jews had been born in Bethlehem, and realizing he had been tricked because they never came back to tell him where the child was, sent men to kill all the children in Bethlehem and the surrounding area, two years old and under. Historians argue a great deal about this episode, which no outside source reports — not even Flavius Josephus, who records every one of Herod’s atrocities. But Bethlehem was a tiny village: there can’t have been many children that age, perhaps twenty or so, and something like this could easily have left no trace in the chronicles of a kingdom where the king had also had three of his own sons and his wife killed. The Church has venerated them as martyrs since the earliest centuries, and the choice has a precise logic of its own: they died in place of someone else, without knowing it, without having chosen anything. They are the only group of saints who did absolutely nothing. In the calendar they come right after Christmas, together with Stephen and John: three days that make the price follow right on the heels of the birth. Since 2002, in many Italian dioceses, December 28 is also the Day for Children Who Are Victims of Violence.