That the Church honors the Holy Innocents along with St. John the Apostle and St. Stephen the first martyr in the first days after Christmas should not surprise us.
The correlation between acknowledging Jesus and suffering would one day be explicitly proclaimed by him. When Peter confesses him as “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus’ first words are to say that the Son of Man would suffer, die and rise. When Peter seeks to divert Jesus from that path, he’s told, “Get behind me, Satan!”
To proclaim Christ, then, is to accept persecution.
Stephen did so by giving his life after testifying to Christ before the Sanhedrin. John, the only apostle not to die a martyr’s death, bore that suffering throughout his life: he alone stood under the cross with Jesus and his Mother that first Good Friday.
And the Holy Innocents, victims of Herod’s persecution, give their lives in place of Jesus. They testify to him by their blood, even if not by their voices — although one cannot deny that their death shrieks also proclaimed him.
The account of the massacre of the Holy Innocents is found in Matthew’s Gospel (2:13-18). The liturgical calendar doesn’t strictly follow the Gospel (as we see from moving from Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25 to St. Stephen’s martyrdom, which occurred after Jesus’ Ascension some 33 years later). In the Gospel, the arrival of the Magi (which we celebrate on Epiphany in January) triggers the Massacre.
The Magi first visit Herod, thinking the local king would be happiest about “the newborn king of the Jews.” Herod sends them on under the pretense of gaining information for him but really to identify one he deems his new competitor. When the Magi “in a dream” are guided back to their own land “by a different route,” not returning to Herod in Jerusalem, Herod decides to take matters into his own hands. To eliminate the competition, about which he has only vague details, he chooses to eliminate all potential claimants, i.e., all males born in Bethlehem. Based on his computations (which tells us, again, that details of the Christmas story might not have evolved over the course of days) that included all males aged 2 and under — it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Some Biblical scholars try to deny this event, claiming we do not find counterpart details in other sources from the time. I don’t find that argument compelling. Everything we know about Herod the Great agrees that he was a bloodthirsty tyrant who did not hesitate to kill even his own relatives, including a wife and son, to maintain his power. It’s said he planned on killing members of Jewish families en masse at his own death to ensure there would be mourning in Israel at his passing.
So the fact that he killed some babies in backwater Bethlehem would hardly have raised much of an eyebrow. The fact that Herod Antipas, Philip and Archelaus later had territories to share as tetrarchs meant they were simply lucky enough to evade their murderous father’s grasp.
Joseph, in a dream, is summoned to take Jesus and Mary and to flee. They head south and west, eventually reaching Egypt. The destination is not just geographical, although Egypt was often a place of refuge. (Remember, the Fertile Crescent runs from the Nile in Egypt to the Tigris and Euphrates in today’s Iraq, with people moving up and down along that route as local conditions demanded. Think of Israel as living in the middle of an interstate highway). Egypt also had theological significance: Israel came to freedom from Egypt and Jesus — the new Moses — will lead his people to definitive freedom through his cross.
A feast in honor of the Holy Innocents enters the Church’s calendar somewhere between the 300s and 400s — we know it is in the Leonine Sacramentary, which dates from about 485. The three post-Christmas feasts also explain the development of the Church’s theology of salvation: Stephen is a martyr by will, love and blood; John by will and love (but not blood, since he was not physically martyred); the Holy Innocents by blood (since they precede the age of reason).
There have, in some quarters, been efforts to identify this feast also with the contemporary phenomenon, called in many quarters a “right” in the Western world, of abortion. Likewise, there has also been an effort in some quarters to shift the focus of this feast away from the murder of these children to the fact that the Holy Family must flee Judea and, therefore, become “refugees” escaping persecution at home. Given that, without life any other concern becomes impossible, I prefer keeping the focus squarely on the attack on life represented by Herod’s deed, i.e., the killing of these children.
The Massacre of the Holy Innocents has frequently been depicted in art, both classical and contemporary. (A contemporary Eastern piece, which I like particularly for its blood-red focus, is found here.)
To depict today’s feast, I have chosen a work by the 13th- and 14th-century Florentine painter, Giotto. The painting, in late Gothic style (still relatively two-dimensional), includes all the classic elements found in depictions of this event.
Herod is show here, as he usually is in such paintings, pointing at his victims, even though — in real life — he probably stayed in Jerusalem while sending his henchmen to Bethlehem to do the dirty work.
The massacre is often depicted as a confrontation: Herod’s soldiers on one side, usually bearing swords or spears, mothers with children on the other, the mothers vainly trying to protect their babies. As we can see from the feet of the central soldier (who has his grip on a baby’s leg) where the two camps face off, an already rich “harvest” of victims has been gathered. Another, with his back turned to us, penetrates the crowd of women to “carry out orders.”
The maternal expression is intended to emphasize the inseparability of mother and child, a fitting reflection in the modern world where no small number of contemporary women disavow motherhood without the “guarantee” of abortion to accompany that undertaking.
For more reading, see here, here and here.
