Death Battles Against Life

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Holy Innocents, remembering those children who died in Christ’s stead during Herod’s persecution (see Matt 2:16-18). 

Blessed John Paul II reminds us that Innocents still see death each day in the modern world:

This marvelous world – so loved by the Father that he sent his only Son for its salvation (Cfr. Io 3,17) – is the theater of a never – ending battle being waged for our dignity and identity as free, spiritual beings. This struggle parallels the apocalyptic combat…Death battles against Life: a "culture of death" seeks to impose itself on our desire to live, and live to the full. There are those who reject the light of life, preferring "the fruitless works of darkness" (Eph 5,11). Their harvest is injustice, discrimination, exploitation, deceit, violence. In every age, a measure of their apparent success is the death of the Innocents. In our own century, as at no other time in history, the "culture of death" has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity: genocide, "final solutions", "ethnic cleansings", and the massive "taking of lives of human beings even before they are born, or before they reach the natural point of death…"

            -Blessed John Paul II, Homily at Cherry Creek State Park, WYD Denver 1993

Let us pray for an end to abortion in the Americas, and let us pray especially for the people of Ireland, that they may be strong in their resistance to the legalization of abortion in their country.

Oh Holy Innocents, who fight for us now as a white-robed army of children, pray for us, that we may be given grace enough to build a Culture of Life!