Episode 933: What is Holy Innocents?

Is there reason to believe that those children were true martyrs? Where is the merit to obtain the crown of martyrdom? To this doubt, I answer: Would the goodness of Christ be defeated by the cruelty of Herod? Could that impious king order those innocents killed, and Christ not crown those who died because of Him?

Stephen was a martyr before the eyes of men who witnessed his passion which he voluntarily embraced to the point of praying for his persecutors. Thus he showed that he was more sensitive to the crime they were committing than to his own wounds.

John was a martyr before the eyes of the Angels, because those spiritual creatures saw the disposition of his soul.

Certainly those children were Thy martyrs, O God, but neither men nor Angels could see their merit, which was before Thy eyes alone. The favor of Thy grace stood in place of their merit. We who have been baptized by water should be all the more ready to honor those little ones who were baptized in their own blood, and therefore linked to all the mysteries of the Divine Infancy.