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Show Holy Innocents. Holy Mother Church celebrates on Thursday, Dec. 2S, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Herod, who was reigning- in Judea at the time of the birth of Our Savoir, jhaving heard that the Wise Men had come from the East to Jerusalem in search of the King of the Jews, was troubled. He called together the chief i priests, and, learning that Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, he told the Wise Men: "When you have found Him, bring me word again, that I also may come and adore Him." But God, ha.virwr -u-arnprl- thom In a ronm nnt tr return, they went back to their homes another way. St. Joseph, too, was ordered or-dered in his sleep to "take the Child and Jlis Mother and fly into Egypt." When Herod found that the Wise Men did not return, he was furious, and ordered that every male child in Bethlehem and its vicinity of the age of 2 and under should be slain. These innocent victims vic-tims were the flowers and the first fruits of Mis martyrs, and triumphed over the world, without having ever known it or experienced its dangers. Reflection' How few, perhaps, of these children, if they had lived, would have escaped the dangers of the world! What snares, what sins, what: miseries were they preserved' from! So we often lament as misfortunes many accidents ac-cidents which in the designs of heaven are the greatest mercies. t |
