Holy Innocents Slain by Herod

Saints commemorated

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  Holy Innocents Slain by Herod

  The Holy Innocents are the male children of Bethlehem and its districts, two years old and under, whom Herod the Great ordered killed after the Magi failed to return and disclose to him the newborn King (Matthew 2:16–18). Deceived and enraged, the tyrant sought to destroy the one Child by destroying many; the Christ-child himself was already borne into Egypt at the angel's warning, and so the slain infants died in his place and for his sake. Though they could not confess Christ in words, the Church honours them as her first martyrs — "baptised in their own blood," the buds of the martyr-host cut down before they could flower. Matthew reads over them the prophecy of Jeremiah, "Rachel weeping for her children." Byzantine tradition numbers them fourteen thousand. They are kept on December 29, within the afterfeast of the Nativity, and in the West on December 28 (Childermas).

• Our Venerable Father Marcellus, Abbot of the Monastery of the Unsleeping Ones (485)

  Marcellus (c. 400 – c. 485) was the third abbot of the Monastery of the Unsleeping Ones (the Akoimetoi), the Constantinopolitan community whose monks, divided into relays of choirs, kept the praise of God ascending day and night without ceasing. A well-born Syrian of Apamea, orphaned young and educated at Antioch and Ephesus, he gave away his inheritance, supported himself as a copyist that he might give the more to the poor, and entered the Akoimetoi under their founder Alexander. Chosen abbot against his will, he governed the community for some sixty years, raised it to its greatest flourishing, and supplied the first monks for the famed Monastery of Stoudios. A staunch upholder of the Chalcedonian faith and a man of attested miracles, he reposed about 485 and is kept on December 29, within the afterfeast of the Nativity.

• Benjamin of Nitria

  Benjamin (†c. 392) was an ascetic of the Nitrian desert in Egypt, one of the desert fathers whose memory is preserved chiefly through the Lausiac History of Palladius. After many years of monastic labour he received from God the gift of healing: by the laying-on of hands or by a little blessed oil he cured those who came to him of every sickness. In his last months he was himself afflicted with a grievous dropsy that swelled his body to an enormous size, yet he continued to heal others and bore his own suffering with such serenity that his brethren marvelled — asking only that they pray his inner man take no hurt. He reposed about the year 392 and is commemorated on December 29, within the afterfeast of the Nativity, together with the ascetic Athenodorus.

• Thaddeus the Confessor

  Thaddeus (†818) was a monk of the great Monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople and a disciple of Theodore the Studite, who suffered as a confessor for the holy icons in the second iconoclast persecution under the emperor Leo V the Armenian. Brought to trial and ordered to trample an icon of the Saviour set beneath his feet, he protested that he had been forced upon it against his will and openly cursed the impiety of the iconoclasts; for this he was beaten with cudgels, dragged by the feet, and cast outside the city walls. Cared for by a compassionate Christian, he lived three days more and reposed of his wounds in the year 818. The Church keeps him on December 29, within the afterfeast of the Nativity.

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