As I mentioned before, this feast is always a struggle for me.
Matthew 2:16-18
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: 18 “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
These children were martyred for the sake of Christ. The traditional number is said to be 14,000. I’m not sure where the number comes from because it is almost certainly much, much less. 14,000 is a lot, no?
What about 140,000?
What about 1,400,000?
That last number is the number of babies aborted in this country in 1994. It is estimated to be over 1.2 million this year.
Through the prayers of the Holy Innocents, may this outrage be stopped.
[Thanks to Kh. Nicole for pointing me in the direction of a post of her husband’s on this very topic. I encourage you to read it.]
Praying With My Feet 
I too struggle with this feast.
My husband did a sermon on this passage one year. I still think it's one of the best ones I've heard on this subject.
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Lord have mercy!
We just got new license plates for my minivan today; they say “Choose Life” and have a picture of cute little kids. Every little bit helps…
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what angers me is when the news reports how wonderful it is that teen pregnancy is down – of course, later they quietly mention that really birth rates are down, not actual pregnancies – ie. isn't it wonderful more and more teens are choosing to kill a baby.
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I took care of a patient on the gyn floor once who had gone in for an abortion and the abortionist made some kind of mistake and sent her to the ER (this happens a LOT). In the end, it appeared that she was ok and the baby was actually fine. I can't remember how far along she was – 12-16 weeks or something. Anyway, the baby was perfectly normal and hadn't suffered any ill effects. Her plan when she left the hospital was to go to some other abortionist and get it done right this time. She was married and had two kids. Her resident and I were appalled and tried to disuade her in ways that wouldn't get us fired. I offered to get the chaplain up to talk to her just so she “would have someone to talk to,” offered social services, anything. I asked why she was doing this. She said she just never really saw herself having three kids. I wanted to throw myself across her bed and plead with her to let me take the baby home. I knew that if I did, I wouldn't have a job to go to the next day and would probably end up in court and lose my license. No joke. All I could do was pray. I cried all the way home and prayed for days. I have no idea what the outcome was…
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