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Today is Friday, December 28, 2018. It is also the Feast of the Holy Innocence, and of course, we are still celebrating Christmas.

Today on the Catholic Sprouts podcast, we are going to talk about today today's feast day, the Feast of the Holy Innocence.

It is a confusing feast day that a lot of people oftentimes get wrong. So let's talk about it.

So the Feast of the Holy Innocence celebrates the death of many, many baby boys. Now, let's go back and let's remember what happened when Jesus was born. So at this time, there was a king named Herod who ruled all of

Judea, which is basically the area where the Israelites lived. He was Jewish, but he was not a

very good man. In fact, he was consumed with power. And the idea that someone, even a baby

foretold in scripture, could come and take his power away from him made him do

evil and horrible things. So at this time, of course, we're told that a star shone above the

stable where Jesus was born. And three wise men were journeying to see Jesus, to pay homage, because they had followed the star, and they truly believed the scripture foretold that the king of the world was born there.

But of course, it was a long journey, and they stopped in and saw Herod before they got there.

Herod questioned them, and he was not pleased to learn where they were

going or who they were going to see. However, Herod sent the kings ahead, telling them that,

you know, go find this king so that I might pay homage when really he intended to follow and to kill this king that he thought

would be born. So the kings win. Of course, the kings were warned. They did not return by way of

Herod. And Herod therefore had no way of really knowing who this baby born to be a king

foretold through scripture was.

He knew, however, that the baby was born in the city of Bethlehem, because the prophets had

foretold that. So Herod decided, since he couldn't find the exact boy that was foretold,

he decided to kill all baby boys in Bethlehem at this time.

Now, of course, we don't know the names of these baby boys, but we do know that this is a horrible

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