Holy Innocents
In the narrative of the Nativity in the Gospel of Matthew, Herod was greatly troubled when the Magi came asking the whereabouts of “the newborn king of the Jews,” whose star they had seen. Herod told them to report back to him so that he could also “do him homage.” However, he became furious and “ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under.” Because of this massacre, Christmas is also accompanied by tears. The Gospel relates the birth of the Son of God as an event fraught with tragedy and grief: the sobbing of mothers bewailing the death of their children in the face of Herod’s tyranny and unbridled thirst for power. “In our world–I write this with a heavy heart–we continue to hear the lamentation of so many mothers, of so many families, for the death of their children, their innocent children.” -Pope Francis