The Feast of the Seven Brothers

July 10th is one of the most ancient feasts in the Roman Rite, that of a group of martyrs from Rome itself, called the Seven Brothers. Their traditional legend makes them the sons of a woman called Felicity, who shares her feast day with Pope St Clement I on November 23rd. The very oldest collection of Roman liturgical texts, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, has seven different Masses for this feast; the second of these includes the rubric “in jejunio – on the fast”, which suggests that it may even have been kept by some with a vigil. Although the feast is missing from the oldest complete sacramentary, the old Gelasian, ca. 750 AD, it is found in the Gellone sacramentary only 30 years later, and likewise in the Gregorian, and the earliest Roman lectionaries.

An altarpiece of St Felicity and her seven sons, painted in 1464 by the Florentine artist Neri di Bicci (1419-91), for the church dedicated to her in his native city. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The breviary and martyrology place the martyrdom of these Saints in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-80), under a prefect of Rome called Publius, an extremely common name in ancient Rome. The very first person of this name to serve as urban prefect, Publius Seius Fuscianus, was actually a childhood friend of Marcus Aurelius, but he did not come into the office until 187, seven years after that emperor’s death.

This is only one of the many historical difficulties about the brothers’ legend. The breviary of St Pius V gives the story only a single lesson, which states that they were made various promises, and threatened with tortures, in order to get them to renounce Christ, and when they would not do so, were executed in various ways as their mother exhorted them to bear their sufferings. Januarius was beaten with lead weights, Felix and Philip with clubs, while Silvanus (whose name is given as “Silanus” in the oldest sources) was thrown off a cliff, and the last three, Alexander, Vitalis and Martial, beheaded. Felicity was then killed four months later. This summary agrees with all the traditional versions of their legend.

However, in the Roman world, beheading was the form of capital punishment reserved for citizens, while more painful forms were used for non-citizens. It is very improbable that only three of seven brothers of one family would be citizens, which makes it difficult to explain why only three of them were killed this way.

The central section of the predella of the panel shown above, in which the prefect Publius condemns Felicity and her sons to death. Notice how someone has expressed their detestation of their cruelty by hacking out the face of both the prefect and his soldiers. (This is not a rare phenomenon. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The Leonine Sacramentary and other ancient sources note that each group of them was buried in a different Christian cemetery, Januarius in that of Praetextatus on the Appian way, Felix and Philip in that of Priscilla, Silvanus in that of Maximus, near his mother, and the last three in the cemetery of the Jordani. This also poses an historical problem. The Romans almost never interfered with the right of even the worst criminals to a decent burial according to custom, and it was generally considered very important for the members of a family to be buried together as much as possible, all the more so among the Christians. Even granting that there could have been a good reason for Januarius to be buried on the opposite side of Rome from the rest of his family, the other three cemeteries are less than a mile apart from each other on the via Salaria. Such a separation of the family in death to four different places, when at least seven of them could easily have been laid to rest in the same place, is also very unlikely.

The very oldest list of Roman martyrs, the Depositio Martyrum, ca. 336 AD, names all seven on July 10, but does not in any way suggest that they were brothers, and makes no mention of their mother. The same is true of the title of their feast in the Leonine Sacramentary, and six of its seven Masses for them. For these reasons, it is now generally accepted that although they were all martyrs who died on the same day, they were not related to each other or to the martyr Felicity. The association of them as a family would therefore have arisen from Silvanus’ proximity to Felicity in their place of burial, and the fact that he shares the date of his death with the others.

A watercolor copy of a fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla, ca. 190 AD, with the Madonna and Child, and a prophet (either Isaiah or Balaam) pointing to a star over her head. It is believed by some scholars that the tomb over which this was painted was that of the martyrs Felix and Philip. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Such skepticism about the traditional story is not modern. The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary accepts the tradition that they were all brothers, but has only one very brief lesson about their martyrdom, almost identical to that in St Pius V’s revision. The other lessons are all taken from a sermon which St Augustine preached on the very ancient feast of the Maccabees. And indeed, many hagiographical scholars believe that the accounts of their passion which make them brothers are modeled on the story told in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, in which seven brothers are martyred in a variety of ways as their mother exhorts them to remain faithful to God despite their torments, and dies herself after all her sons, “not losing them”, as Augustine says, “but sending them forth.”

However, if this is indeed what we might call a hagiographical confusion, it is one that arose very early. An epitaph for St Felicity which is attributed to Pope St Damasus I (366-84), or at least close to his time, says that she died “with her sons”, although it does not give their names, or say how many they were. By the time of St Peter Chrysologus, who was bishop of Ravenna from 433-50, the number had been fixed at seven, as he preached a sermon on St Felicity in which he called her “truly a mother of lights… who shines brightly in all the world with her seven-fold progeny.” At the end of the 6th century, St Gregory the Great preached a sermon in the church built over the catacomb where she was buried, in which he praises her as one “more than a martyr, since she sent seven pledges before her to the kingdom.” However, we may note that neither Peter nor Gregory gives the names of any of the sons.

The Martyrdom of Ss Rufina and Secunda, 1620-25, by Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (1573 - 1626), Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574 - 1625), and Giovanni Battista Crespi (1573 - 1632). ~ Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Since the 12th century, this feast has been kept jointly with that of two other martyrs, sisters named Rufina and Secunda, whose passion is likewise considered historically unreliable. (In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, they are not mentioned at all in the Matins lessons.) The story goes that they were the daughters of a nobleman called Asterius, and engaged by their parents to marry fellow Christians named Armentarius and Verinus, but in 257, when the persecution of Valerian broke out, both fiancés apostatized. The sisters fled from Rome, but were captured and brought before the urban prefect Junius Donatus, (a real historical personage, who did hold that office in that period), who imprisoned them, and tried to induce them to likewise apostatize. The breviary preserves the account that when he had Rufina scourged, Secunda protested, “Why is it that you honor my sister, but dishonor me? Order that we both be beaten, as we both confess that Christ is God.” Following various tortures, they were beheaded, and then given burial by a woman named Plautilla on her own property.

The site of their burial, at the tenth milestone from Rome on the Aurelian Way, was called “Silva Nigra – the Black Forest”, but in honor of the martyrs, the name was changed to “Silva Candida – the White (or ‘bright’) Forest.” In the reign of Pope St Julius I (337-52), a basilica was built over the tomb; by the mid-5th century, a town had grown up around it which was big enough to be made its own diocese. This became one of the seven “suburbicarian” sees, the dioceses around Rome whose bishops are traditionally made cardinals, and in the Middle Ages, often served by turns as the assistant bishop at the Pope’s solemn Masses, as other bishops are served by an assistant priest.

The chapel within the narthex of the Lateran baptistery which contains the relics of Ss Rufina and Secunda within its altar. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by ho visto nina volare, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By the mid-12th century, however, Silva Candida was barely more than a ruin, and its cardinal-bishop resided permanently in Rome; the see was therefore united to another suburbicarian diocese, Porto, and remains so to this day. In 1154, the relics of the two sister martyrs were recovered from the ruins of their church, and transferred to the Lateran baptistery; their names were then added to the feast of the seven brothers whose day they share.

Blessed Rolando Rivi

On this day in the year 1945, a 14-year old Italian seminarian named Rolando Rivi died as a martyr in a little town called Monchio, in the province of Modena. Rolando was born in 1931, and began serving Mass at the age of five; he made his first Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi, June 16, 1938. In 1942, at the age of 11, he entered the minor seminary at Marola, and was admired by his teachers as an exemplary student, and a boy of sincere and serious devotion. As was the custom in those days, he was clothed in the cassock, and wore the saturno as part of the regular clerical dress; already at that tender age, he expressed the desire to become a missionary. He was noted as both an excellent singer and musician, and participated enthusiastically in the seminary choir.

The young Rolando was the kind of fellow who shows himself to be a leader in every activity, and his grandmother is reported to have said, with the special wisdom of Italian grandmothers, that he would end up as “a saint or a scoundrel.” Many stories are told of him encouraging his friends to come to church for Mass or devotions after a soccer game. During his summer vacation, he continued to dress and live as a seminarian, with no remission from his devotional life of daily Mass, rosary, meditation and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Many times he said that the cassock was a sign “that I belong to Jesus.”

In the summer of 1944, the seminary at Marola was occupied by German troops, and Rolando was forced to return home; he was able, however, to continue his studies with the local parish priest. He continued to wear the cassock in public, despite his parents’ concerns that this would make him a target of the anticlerical violence then rampant in north-central Italy. And indeed, by the time Rolando returned home from the seminary, his former parish priest had been moved out of the area for safety’s sake. In the years immediately after the collapse of Italian fascism in July 1943, nearly 100 priests were murdered by Communist partisans in the part of the Emilia-Romagna known as the “red triangle.”

On April 10, 1945, a group of these partisans kidnapped Rolando as he was studying in a little grove near his home; his parents discovered both his books and a note from the partisans warning them not to look for him. He was taken to a farmhouse, beaten and tortured for three days, under the absurd accusation that he had been a spy for the Germans; he was then dragged into a woods, stripped of his cassock, and shot twice in the head. The partisans rolled his cassock up into a ball and used it to play soccer.

His father and parish priest discovered his body the following day. He was buried temporarily in the cemetery of the town where he was killed, but translated a month later to his native place, San Valentino. Since the day of his death often falls in Holy Week or Easter week, his liturgical feast is kept on the day of this translation, May 29th. The decree recognizing that his violent death was inflicted “in odium fidei” was signed by the Pope on March 28, 2013, and his beatification as a martyr was celebrated on October 5th of that year. His relics now repose in the church of San Valentino di Castellarano; on his tomb is written “Io sono di Gesù”, Italian for “I belong to Jesus.”

I make bold to suggest that Bl. Rolando is a good person to appeal to if you know any seminarians who need prayers, and especially those who are persecuted for their love of the Church’s traditions; and further, that it would not be a bad idea to consider what it was about the Church that Rolando Rivi lived in that enabled him to face martyrdom so bravely at the age of only 14. Beate Rolande, ora pro nobis!

St Soteris, A Martyr of St Ambrose’s Family

In the Ambrosian Rite, today is the feast of a relative of St Ambrose, a woman named Soteris who was martyred at Rome, in the persecution of Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century. (Ambrose’s family was originally from Rome.) A catalog of Saints incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, but certainly very early, says that she was buried in a catacomb off the via Appia, which was later named from her. In the mid-9th century, Pope Sergius II had her body brought to the Roman church of San Martino ai Monti on the Esquiline Hill.

A stucco relief of St Soteris in the Roman basilica of St Sebastian, by Carlo Fontana, 1705-12. This church is also on the via Appia, near the place of her original burial, which has long been lost. 

Everything we know about her comes from two passages of her famous kinsman’s works, which are brief enough to quote in full. The first is the conclusion of his treatise On Virgins (3, 38-39), addressed to his sister Marcellina. Having previously given examples of holy virgins from other parts of the world, he writes:

“But why do I use examples of foreigners to you, my sister, whom the inspired succession of hereditary chastity has taught by descent from a martyred ancestor? For whence did you learn, who had no one from whom to learn, living in the country, with no virgin companion, instructed by no teacher? You have played the part then not of a disciple, which this cannot be done without teaching, but of an heir of virtue.

For how could it happen that the holy Soteris should not have been the originator of your purpose, who is an ancestor of your race? And she, in an age of persecution, borne to the heights of suffering by the insults of slaves, gave to the executioner even her face, which is usually free from injury amid the tortures of the whole body, and watched, rather than suffered her torments; so brave and patient that when she offered her tender cheeks to punishment, the executioner failed to strike before the martyr yielded under the injuries. She moved not her face, she turned not away her countenance, she uttered not a groan or a tear. Lastly, when she had overcome other kinds of punishment, she found the sword which she desired.”

A wooden sculpture of St Ambrose working in his study (but ready for Pontifical Vespers, as one should be), made ca. 1500 in Palencia, Spain, now at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Postdlf, CC BY-SA 3.0. 

The second is from his Exhortation to Virginity, chapter 82, in which he contrasts Soteris’ acceptance of being beaten in the face with other consecrated women of his own time, some of whom took too much care for their physical appearance.

“Now the holy Soteris (to bring forth from our own house the example of a holy relative; for we have our priests, our nobility which is to be preferred to (high public offices); we have, I say, the dignities of the faith, which cannot perish) … took no care for her own countenance. And although she had a very beautiful face, and was a noble maiden of the family of our ancestors, she esteemed (the secular honors) of her family much less than the Faith, and when ordered to sacrifice, refused. The terrible persecutor ordered that she be beaten on the palms of her hand, so that she, a tender virgin, might yield to the pain or to the shame.

But when she heard him say this, she uncovered her face, unveiled before the sun, and uncovered unto martyrdom; and willingly met the violence (done to her), offering her face, that the sacrifice of martyrdom might be made in that very place, where there is wont to be proof of chastity. For she rejoiced that by the loss of her beauty, the danger to her integrity was taken away. But although they could indeed scar her countenance with the marks of the wounds (inflicted on her), they still could not in any way disfigure the grace of her valor and her inward beauty.”

Soteris’ unusual name (sometimes also spelled Sotheris) is a feminized form of the Greek word “sōtēr – savior.” An agent noun ending in -tēr would normally be feminized with -teira, but “sōteira” was used as an epithet for several pagan goddesses. It seems likely that Sōtēris, with the common feminine suffix “-is, – idos”, is a deliberate Christian coinage made to honor the Savior while avoiding pagan connotations.

Wise As Serpents And Simple As Doves

On the general calendar, today is the feast of a group of martyrs from Persia, a couple named Marius and Martha, and their sons Audifax and Abbacum. Martha is of course a Jewish name, while “Abbacum” (or “Ambacum”) is the Greek form of the name of the prophet Habakkuk, indicating perhaps that she at least was of Jewish descent. Marius, on the other hand, is as Roman a name as they come, which suggests perhaps that he was descended from a Roman soldier who served on the Empire’s eastern frontier.

In the reign of the emperor Claudius II (268-70), they came to Rome to venerate the tombs of the martyrs, taking care of their fellow Christians who were in chains for the Faith, and burying some of those who were actually killed. For this, they were arrested, and after refusing to sacrifice to the gods, tortured, then led out of the city and executed. This is consonant with the idea that Marius was of Roman descent, since Romans convicted of capital crimes were entitled to be executed away from the public view, and hence outside the city. (The same happened with St Paul.)

The Martyrdom of Ss Marius, Martha, Audifax and Abbacum, ca. 1750, by the Italian painter Corrado Giaquinto. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The traditional account of their history is regarded as unreliable (though not entirely so), in part because the reign of Claudius II falls within a period which was almost entirely peaceful for the Church, between the end of the persecution of Valerian in 258, and the beginning of that of Diocletian in 303. Nevertheless, their feast is extremely ancient. In the old Gelasian Sacramentary, the oldest of the Roman Rite (ca. 750 A.D.), they are celebrated jointly with St Sebastian on January 20th. Thirty years later, they have their own feast day on Jan. 19th in the Gellone Sacramentary, although the copyist of the manuscript changes the possessive form of Marius’ name to the feminine “Marie”, perhaps thinking that the martyrs in question were somehow the sisters of Lazarus. (The manuscript is full of very random spelling errors, so this may not be in any way deliberate or meaningful.)

Today is also one week before the feast of St Polycarp. When Cardinal Baronius revised and greatly expanded the Roman Martyrology in the 1560s, he also added to this day a martyr who is mentioned early in the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom.

“At Smyrna, the birth into heaven of the blessed martyr Germanicus, who, in the reign of Marcus Antoninus (Pius) and Lucius Aurelius, when he was flourishing in the beauty of his first youth, was condemned by the judge, and through the grace of God, and putting aside the fear of bodily weakness, willingly provoked the wild beast prepared for him; and being ground (like wheat) by its teeth, merited to be made one body with the Lord Jesus Christ, the True Bread, by dying for him.”

The last part of this sentence, “being ground (like wheat) etc.”, is a deliberate reference to the words of St Ignatius of Antioch, a contemporary of Polycarp and Germanicus, in his Epistle to the Romans (chapter 4): “I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” As the acts of Polycarp note, Germanicus, once he had been condemned, did not just accept martyrdom, but embraced it.

“… the most noble Germanicus strengthened the timidity of others by his own patience, and fought heroically with the wild beasts. For, when the proconsul sought to persuade him, and urged him to take pity upon his age, he attracted the wild beast towards himself, and provoked it, being desirous to escape all the more quickly from an unrighteous and impious world.”

It was this heroic act which then provoked the pagans of Smyrna to seek out Polycarp for martyrdom. “… upon this the whole multitude, marveling at the nobility of mind displayed by the devout and godly race of Christians, cried out, ‘Away with the atheists; let Polycarp be sought out!’ ”

St Polycarp (second from left), with his fellow martyrs Demiter, Vincent of Saragossa, Pancras (or Pancratius) and Chrysogonus, depicted in a mosaic in the church of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy, before 526 AD.

The authors of the Acts of Polycarp introduce Germanicus not only for the sake of historical completeness, but also to point that there is a difference, and an important one, between accepting martyrdom when it comes, and going out of one’s way to provoke it, for another who had done exactly the latter wound up yielding to the persecutors and offering the sacrifice as they demanded. “Quintus … when he saw the wild beasts, became afraid. This was the man who forced himself and some others to come forward voluntarily (for trial as a Christian). After many entreaties, the proconsul persuaded him to swear (by the divine personification of Caesar) and to offer sacrifice. Wherefore, brethren, we do not commend those who give themselves up (to suffering), seeing the Gospel does not teach us to do so.” (Matthew 10, 23).

Polycarp is therefore commended as one who, in obedience to the Lord’s command, did not seek to be martyred, but heroically accepted martyrdom when it came for him. A wise lesson for every age, as are the words from Matthew 10 just a few verses earlier than the ones cited in the acts of Polycarp, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves.”

The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, by Antonio Campi

Today is the commemoration of the martyrdom of St Lawrence, who died in the persecution of Emperor Valerian in AD 258.

This painting was made by the Italian Antonio Campi (1522 ca. - 1587) and completed in 1581. Stylistically it belongs to what is called the Mannerist period, which runs from the period of the Council of Trent until about the end of the 16th century. Artists of that era were searching for a new Christian harmonization of idealism and naturalism, one that was not necessarily so slavishly attached to the classical ideal of ancient Greece and Rome, as typified by the High Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo or Raphael, although some still chose to do so. It produced a variety of individual styles, some of which in my opinion had great merit and beauty, such as those of Pontormo and El Greco, but most did not inspire followers. Hence we did not see the emergence of any coherent tradition that could fulfill the directives of the Council as part of the Counter-reformation, until the end of the century. This tradition became what we now call the Baroque style, the pioneers of which were Titian, Francesco Barocci (1535ca. - 1612), from the new style may have taken its name, and the greatest popularizer of it, Caravaggio.

I chose this painting because it shows the gruesome death of this great martyr on a grid iron. We live in an days of more persecution of Christians than any other in the recent past. In the US, it is still a soft persecution, although it may yet become a more violent one that involves physical danger, which is what Christians in Pakistan, for example, face daily. Nevertheless, I feel the pressure to witness the Faith daily, and I pray for the grace and courage to do so (and am dismayed at how much I hesitate to speak up). Part of the inspiration for me is the courage of these great Saints of the past, who stood up to the greatest of tests so heroically.

Some Mannerist artists stuck more closely to the classical ideal than others. Pontormo is one who continued to draw heavily on the classical ideal; his Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is now lost, but this is the one by his student Bronzino.

Blessed Rolando Rivi

On this day in the year 1945, a 14-year old Italian seminarian named Rolando Rivi died as a martyr in a little town called Monchio, in the province of Modena. Rolando was born in 1931, and began serving Mass at the age of five; he made his first Communion on the feast of Corpus Christi, June 16, 1938. In 1942, at the age of 11, he entered the minor seminary at Marola, and was admired by his teachers as an exemplary student, and a boy of sincere and serious devotion. As was the custom in those days, he was clothed in the cassock, and wore the saturno as part of the regular clerical dress; already at that tender age, he expressed the desire to become a missionary. He was noted as both an excellent singer and musician, and participated enthusiastically in the seminary choir.

The young Rolando was the kind of fellow who shows himself to be a leader in every activity, and his grandmother is reported to have said, with the special wisdom of Italian grandmothers, that he would end up as “a saint or a scoundrel.” Many stories are told of him encouraging his friends to come to church for Mass or devotions after a soccer game. During his summer vacation, he continued to dress and live as a seminarian, with no remission from his devotional life of daily Mass, rosary, meditation and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. Many times he said that the cassock was a sign “that I belong to Jesus.”

In the summer of 1944, the seminary at Marola was occupied by German troops, and Rolando was forced to return home; he was able, however, to continue his studies with the local parish priest. He continued to wear the cassock in public, despite his parents’ concerns that this would make him a target of the anticlerical violence then rampant in north-central Italy. And indeed, by the time Rolando returned home from the seminary, his former parish priest had been moved out of the area for safety’s sake. In the years immediately after the collapse of Italian fascism in July 1943, nearly 100 priests were murdered by Communist partisans in the part of the Emilia-Romagna known as the “red triangle.”

On April 10, 1945, a group of these partisans kidnapped Rolando as he was studying in a little grove near his home; his parents discovered both his books and a note from the partisans warning them not to look for him. He was taken to a farmhouse, beaten and tortured for three days, under the absurd accusation that he had been a spy for the Germans; he was then dragged into a woods, stripped of his cassock, and shot twice in the head. The partisans rolled his cassock up into a ball and used it to play soccer.

His father and parish priest discovered his body the following day. He was buried temporarily in the cemetery of the town where he was killed, but translated a month later to his native place, San Valentino. Since the day of his death often falls in Holy Week or Easter week, his liturgical feast is kept on the day of this translation, May 29th. The decree recognizing that his violent death was inflicted “in odium fidei” was signed by the Pope on March 28, 2013, and his beatification as a martyr was celebrated on October 5th of that year. His relics now repose in the church of San Valentino di Castellarano; on his tomb is written “Io sono di Gesù”, Italian for “I belong to Jesus.”

I make bold to suggest that Bl. Rolando is a good person to appeal to if you know any seminarians who need prayers, and especially those who are persecuted for their love of the Church’s traditions; and further, in preparation for next year’s symposium on the priesthood, that it would not be a bad idea to consider what it was about the Church that Rolando Rivi lived in that enabled him to face martyrdom so bravely at the age of only 14. Beate Rolande, ora pro nobis!

King Herod and the Martyr Children

Why in the world would anyone ever think of killing a child?

If we look at the nature of Herod’s murderous decree and the way in which the Innocents suffered for Christ, we see that the persecution of the child results from a hatred of God, of human nature as the imago Dei, and of Christ who has a special love and welcome for all “little ones”: children, the elderly, the poor, the handicapped, the helpless, the oppressed.

Herod “the Great,” as he was called by some of his contemporaries, slaughtered the children of Christ’s age because he did not want to submit to the reign of Christ the King. He did not want anyone else to rule over him; he wanted only to rule himself—and, of course, to rule others. (As St. Thomas notes: “Mary and Joseph needed to be instructed concerning Christ’s birth before He was born, because it devolved on them to show reverence to the child conceived in the womb, and to serve Him even before He was born, ST III.36.2 ad 2.)

Then Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry, and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Gospel of the day)

The Roman Emperors who persecuted Christianity in its infancy stand in league with Herod: they sought to extinguish a religion that taught the supremacy of another king, another ruler, to whom all earthly knees must bend. If Christianity had not exacted this otherworldly allegiance, the Emperors would have left it quite alone. Any bizarre mystery cult or intellectual religion was palatable to the cosmopolitan taste of the Romans; as long as the citizens would tip a spoonful of incense into the fire to honor the divinity of the Emperor who commanded all earthly obedience, then they could go about worshiping or not worshiping whatever god they pleased. But Christianity declared that there was a higher kingship, a higher imperium: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above” (John 19, 11). To this higher authority, all earthly kings and kingdoms must pay homage.

It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty and everlasting God. Because by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the eyes of our mind: that while we acknowledge Him to be God seen by men, we may be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen. (Preface of the Nativity)

As if such a claim were not audacious enough, Christianity went further. It taught that all men who share in the mystery of Christ are adopted sons with Him, co-heirs of the kingdom of heaven—and as a consequence, that all men, from Emperor to slave, are fundamentally equal in the eyes of God. [1] Thus, while in the worldly order the slave negates himself before his master and the citizen falls before his Emperor, in the divine order inaugurated by Christ, the master serves his slave and the Emperor his citizens. [2] All must serve one another in humility and love. The most basic Christian identity is that of servanthood: Jesus tells his disciples that they are to distinguish themselves not as masters but as servants. [3]

Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings, O God, Thou hast perfected praise, because of Thine enemies. Ps. O Lord our God, how admirable is Thy Name in the whole earth! (Introit)

At this late time in the history of the West, when Christianity has become so story-book familiar that its radical message fails to attract notice, can we begin to imagine how offensive this religion must have been to the pagans of ancient empires? We must renew in our minds the impression the Christian faith produced: it was a stumbling block, impious and rebellious. Indeed, it was something that had to be not only rejected but crushed, for it turned upside-down almost everything that fallen mankind takes for granted. In overthrowing the idols of paganism, Christ did more than introduce the worship of the true God; he destroyed an entire world, an entire philosophy of life, based upon the idolatry of power and self-will.

When we venerate martyrs, we venerate those who will not tip a spoonful of incense to the gods of this world; we honor those who by their example, by the offering of their life, prove to a world comfortably entangled in self-love that man is meant to live unto God alone and sacrifice all that he is in the service of others.

O God, whose praise the martyred Innocents on this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying: destroy in us all the evils of sin, that our life also may proclaim in deeds Thy faith which our tongues profess. (Collect)

A man and woman who conceive a child are bound by natural and divine law to nurture and educate that child, or to give it up for adoption when they cannot take responsibility for its upbringing. They are bound to submit to the demands laid upon them by their children, just as Joseph and Mary devoted their lives to serving the Christchild, and as all faithful parents do when they sacrifice years to the rearing of their children. The child is like a king in that he must be served, but he is absolutely helpless, he is all neediness and dependence, he cannot even survive unless cared for by others. He begs to be welcomed; he needs and demands love. If there is one person whom all should love, it is the child, the infant, who is pure dependency and trust. Where is the human being who cannot find room in his heart to do this much?

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the new birth of Thine only-begotten Son in the flesh may set us free, who are held by the old bondage under the yoke of sin. (Commemoration of Christmas)

Herod was such a man. Just as there was no empty room in the inn of Bethlehem, there was no receptive room in his heart for another person to take precedence. All that Herod knew is that this promised child would threaten his lovable self, his selfish self-rule; and that was enough of a motive for him to send the soldiers on their horrible mission. In a mockery of his own rulership, Herod slaughtered the most innocent of his subjects, simply to ensure that none of them would grow up to manhood and ask of him some sacrifice of honor, freedom, or power. As St. Peter Chrysologus preaches:

Herod’s inhuman cruelty has exposed how far jealousy tends to go, and spite leaps, and envy makes its way. While this cruelty was jealously seeking the narrow limits of temporal reign, it strove to block the rise of the eternal King. … In his earthly fury he hunts Him whom he does not believe to be born from heaven. He moves the soldier’s camp to the bosoms of mothers, and attacks the citadel of love among their breasts. He tests his steel in those tender breasts, sheds milk before blood, causes the infants to undergo death before experiencing life, brings darkness on those just entering into the light of day…. In fear of a successor, he moved against his Creator. He slew the innocent babies, with intent to kill Innocence Himself. … Their tongue has been silent, their eyes have seen nothing, their hands have done nothing. No act has proceeded from them; then, whence do they have any guilt? They who did not yet know how to live got death. The period of their life did not protect them, nor did their age excuse them, nor their silence defend them. With Herod, the mere fact that they were born was their crime. [4]

The ultimate cause of abortion is that some people do not want to have another person “reigning” over them, another life making claims upon them, absorbing their time and their energy—in a word, making them servants. Whether it be parent, relative, doctor, nurse, counselor, politician, employer, or any other who is primarily responsible for the decision to abort or the collective pressures which bring it about, abortion objectively means: I, the adult with power over life and death, will have no ruler but myself alone; non serviam, I will not serve, I will not show mercy. This child is a nuisance, an inconvenience, a hardship, it will change the way we have to live our lives, and that, finally, is what we cannot allow.

The children abandoned by their parents and murdered by the abortionist are rejected, just as the infant boys were rejected, on account of Christ whom they represent. The Holy Innocents shed their blood in witness to Christ “who came to his own and his own received him not” (John 1, 11). Strikingly, St. Peter Chrysologus declaims:

Isaias had foretold that a virgin would bring forth the God of heaven, the King of the earth, the Lord of the regions, the renewer of the world, the slayer of death, the restorer of life, the author of perpetuity. The very occurrence of the Lord’s nativity proved how sad this was for worldly men, how frightening to kings … Fearing a successor, they tried to slay the Saviour of all men. At length, since they could not find Him, they devastated His country, mixed mothers’ milk with blood, and beat to death the infants of His own years. They dismembered the companions of His innocence, because they could not find for punishment sharers in any guilt of His. If they did all this after Christ was already born, what would they in their wild fury have done to Him when He was conceived? (Chrysologus, Sermons, 242)

The Holy Innocents did not meet their death freely confessing a Savior whom they knew; they played no active part in their own martyrdom. They were slaughtered for the same reason Christ was ultimately crucified: self-will, self-rule. That Christ disappointed Jewish hopes for a Messianic leader who would establish political self-rule takes on deeper significance when considered in relation to fallen man’s restless desire for worldly autonomy or autocracy, the desire to be the very rule of behavior, the measure of right and wrong. The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, His rulership is of an entirely different order (John 18, 33-38). There is only one rule of behavior, one measure of right and wrong—the Truth which Jesus himself is (John 14, 6).

These are they who were not defiled with women: for they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb: and in their mouth there was found no lie: for they are without spot before the throne of God. (Epistle of the day)

As the chief priests, the people, and Pilate rejected Christ in the end, so Herod rejected Him in the beginning. The sudden friendship that sprang up between Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, son of the Herod who ordered the massacre of the Innocents, is not a mere coincidence recorded by Luke (23, 12) for the curious reader. Among other things, it demonstrates the ultimate identity of the first Herodian rejection of Christ the infant and the final Roman-Jewish rejection of Christ the man. The end circles around to meet up with the beginning, just as the legal endorsement of abortion logically necessitates the legal endorsement of euthanasia, or any “purification of unwanted social elements.”

In line with two kinds of persecutions, there are going to be two kinds of martyrs: those who are killed on account of professing a Gospel which their persecutors hate, and those, like John the Baptist, who are killed because their presence prevents someone else from living as he or she pleases. The latter kind of martyr, though not giving an explicitly Christian witness, is by no means unrelated to Christ. As victims of the insidious pride which has the kingdom of God as its formal object, their witness to the Messiah is not personal but cosmological. The Holy Innocents died a death of rejection by the world and its powers long before Christ died on the Cross, despised and rejected; they were killed out of the same hatred for God and for his law that will later propel the enemies of Christ and all who persecute Christians throughout history.

The witness given by a martyr is brought about by persecutors who torture or kill him precisely because he represents the Creator and the Redeemer to an ungrateful and sinful world. To be persecuted is obviously a necessary condition for martyrdom, but it is more. If a sleeping Catholic is attacked and killed by a Moslem out of hatred for the Christian faith, the former can be a martyr—not because he consciously bore witness, but because his very identity as a Catholic was the reason for which the other killed him; the motive specified the generic act of killing as an act of persecution. If, on the other hand, a Moslem judge ordered the death of a Christian because he had committed a serious crime, the Christian would not be a martyr by anyone’s definition. The motive of the killer thus figures crucially in the definition of any “passive” or “unconscious” martyr such as the Holy Innocents.

Although the victims of abortion are not martyrs because they are not incorporated into either the Old Covenant (as were the circumcised Hebrew children slaughtered by command of Herod) or the New Covenant (as would be children who are sacramentally baptized and thus capable of being killed in odium fidei), their death is nevertheless an implicit and analogous rejection of God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer. It is therefore not inappropriate to link the memory of these victims with the story of the Holy Innocents recounted each year, and to pray to God for the conversion of all who lend their support to the ever-crystallizing regime of Antichrist.

[1] See John 1, 12–13; Rom. 8, 14–23; Eph. 1, 5; Gal 4, 4–7; 1 John 3, 1; Acts 10, 34; Rom. 10, 12; Eph. 6, 8-9; Col 3, 11.
[2] See Phlm 1, 15–16; Eph. 6, 9; Col. 4,1; the same teaching is already present in Wis. 6, 2–10 and Sir. 32, 1–3.
[3] See Luke 9, 48; Eph. 5, 21; Phil. 2, 3; Matt. 20, 25–27; Mark 9, 34.
[4] Selected Sermons, trans. G. Ganss [New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953], 254–55; 256–57.