As the Church tells the Christmas story after the birth of Jesus, it is obvious by now that it is not just a rosy heart-warming story.
After celebrating the birth of Christ on Christmas Day, the Church follows on with the feast of St. Stephen who suffered martyrdom by being stoned to death.
And today, the story is followed on with another bloody heart-wrenching story of the massacre of the infants in Bethlehem.
Those infants were hardly 2 years old and they were killed under the orders of a paranoid king who felt threatened by an infant whom he came to know as King of the Jews.
The Church calls those infants The Holy Innocents and proclaimed them as martyrs, although it was certainly not their choice to offer their lives for Christ.
Those infants hardly knew the difference between their left hand and right, neither did they did anything bad, or for that matter, anything good.
But the Church honours them so as to state the virtue of innocence and that those who lost their lives innocently from violence and hostility will not lose their lives in vain.
They will be remembered, just as the Holy Innocents are remembered and honoured.
Their cries will not be in vain as God will gather them into His loving arms.
But may the cries of the innocents, whether of infants, children or adults, be heard by us so that, with God-given courage, we will do whatever we can to put an end to the violence and hostility against the innocent.