Holy Innocents Feast

Holy Innocence and the Holy Innocents

God is not only a Father; he is also an Eternal Child. I say this not because I adore the weakness and helplessness of the child. On the contrary, it is the child’s strength which enraptures me: his all-powerfulness. Over the cadavers of Nietzschean heroes and the slaughterhouses which they filled with martyrs before adding to them the corruption of their own bodies, the purity of the child stands firm and triumphs. Even in our own lives, no matter what they might have been, it is possible to discover that triumphant purity and to reawaken it….

I put myself on the side of childhood—on the side of the assassinated child Abel as well as on the side of the victorious child David; of the child Joseph who reigned in Egypt and of the Hebrew children who sang their joy in a furnace and were subjected to lions and flames. I am, above all, on the side of the Infant God who promised happiness to the meek. In the eyes of the world the strong man is the brute propelled by the power of his instincts…. But the Infant God…is the only one who is really all-powerful. He has within his fragile being the double torrent of two natures: The Word was made flesh. By analogy, and infinitely distant from this mystery of mysteries, carnal and sinful man is united to the incarnate love of this Child through the grace he received upon his entry into this world….

I will become a child to be near you, O God-Child. There is neither death nor old age for those who love you; otherwise how would they be saved? For if it is true that the Lord asks those who follow him to carry their cross, he does not enjoin them, except for a small number of saints, to be crucified as he was; on the other hand, he declares to all, whoever they might be, that they must become as little children to enter the Kingdom and that they must receive the Kingdom of God with the heart of a child. Unless you become as one of these little ones…. There is therefore no other means of salvation than to become like a child…. If the corruption of childhood is the worst kind, then the sanctity of childhood is what most resembles God. This is what must be redeemed in every human being.

François Mauriac