Feast of the Holy Innocents

Today is the commemoration of the 14000 infants and small children massacred by King Herod's soldiers. They were killed in an effort to murder Jesus Christ whose birth the Holy Magi had announced to Herod. This is also a feast on which I feel a strong sense of empathy for those in our society who are the victims violence, abuse, or neglect and who are the most defenseless, namely children. I particularly would call to mind the victims of abortion and infanticide so common in our world. But children are also victims in so many other ways. Some are impressed into service as soldiers in bloody civil wars, others are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. How many go to bed hungry every night in all corners of the world? This is a day on which Christians should resolve to do all in our power to protect children from the horrors of the modern world.