Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.
These were the children massacred under orders of King Herod after the birth of Jesus.
They are, in a sense, the first Christian martyrs, along with Saint Stephen and Saint John the Baptist.
Here are two reflections, one from Fulton Sheen and one from Frederick William Faber.
Sheen focuses on the nature of persecution as the mark of a Christian while Faber sees the mystery in the fact that the passing of thousands of years has allowed us to see such an horrific event through the lens of faith rather than despair.
'As circumcision was the mark of the Old Law, so persecution would be the mark of the New Law. “For My name’s sake,” He told His Apostles they would be hated. All things around Him speak of His death, for that was the purpose of His coming. The very entrance door over the stable where He was born was marked with blood, as was the threshold of the Jews in Egypt.
Innocent lambs in the Passover bled for Him in centuries past; now innocent children without spot, little human lambs, bled for Him. But God warned the Wise Men not to return to Herod, So they returned to their own country By a different way. No one who ever meets Christ with a good will returns the same way as he came. Baffled in his design to kill the Divine, the enraged tyrant ordered the indiscriminate slaughter of all male children under two years of age. There are more ways than one of practicing birth control'
Fulton Sheen
'To be near Jesus was the height of happiness, yet it was also both a necessity and a privilege of suffering. We cannot spare the Holy Innocents from the beautiful world of Bethlehem. Next to Mary and joseph, we could take them away least of all. Without them we should read the riddle of the Incarnation wrong, by missing many of its deepest laws.
They are symbols to us of the necessities of nearness to our Lord.
They are the living laws of the vicinity of Jesus. Softened through long ages, the mothers' cries and the children's moans come to us almost as a sad strain of music, sweeter than it is sad, sweet even because it is so sad, the moving elegy of Bethlehem'
Frederick William Faber
There are lots of fake quotes going around.