Once, there was a man who heard about an unplanned pregnancy. He had to hear about it second hand, as he had no clue such a thing was going on right under his nose.
He saw the child as a threat. His career could very well go right down the tubes. His personal power might be weakened, even lost. He was embarrassed in front of his colleagues.
Well. He decided to nip that in the bud. No baby, no problem, right? After all, it was not illegal for him to get rid of the child. He was well within his rights to take care of the problem in a permanent way.
And so, as the Christ child was smuggled from the country in the dead of night, Herod ordered all of the male Hebrew children to be slaughtered – and his soldiers carried out the order. Why wouldn’t they? It was legal, after all, and the Israelites weren’t “real” people. They wouldn’t become “real people” until, and unless they became Roman citizens.
Today, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, pray for an end to the slaughter of the innocents. In America, over 50,000,000 children have been killed in my generation, legally, because they were inconvenient, expensive, or not perfect. (Hmm. Sounds like me on most days.)
Bye bye, lully lullay
Lully thou little tiny child,
Bye bye lully lullay
India leads the world in gendercide- that is, the killing of infants and the unborn babies because they are girls.
How may we do,
For to preserve this day?
This poor youngling,
For whom we sing,
Bye bye lully, lullay
Chinese young adults do not have sisters. They do not have aunts, uncles, or siblings – they’ve all been “prevented” or killed. Imagine what this means for the world, when the largest culture has no extended family ties?
Charged he has this day
All young children to slay
Darfur, Sudan
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Don’t forget that another man heard about that unplanned pregnancy, which would have embarrassed him and scandalized his whole community. He, too, was within his rights to end the pregnancy (by stoning the mother, his betrothed, for infidelity). Instead he decided to leave her alone and distance himself from the situation, until God told him to do more. Totally trusting God, St. Joseph took care of Mary and raised the child Jesus as his own.
Very powerful. I never knew the meaning of this song (in truth, I couldn’t discern the lyrics before and never looked them up). Thank you for this post-my prayers go out to these children.
Powerful stuff.
I have sung that carol many times but had never thought of it in that way (with connection to the slaughter which continues.) It is heartbreaking.
This is so sad!! But this everybody fault: Why if people is not going to take responsibility of their actions, what do they bring a child to the world and not taking care of them?
There is a God up there seeing all these atrocities and believe when I say that they are going to pay.
Lets take for example china: They do it for control of population: Oh come on!! They should control they natural impulses of making babies.
This is just bad. And the worth thing is they are countries such as Italy and Canada where they pay you to bring a family with kids.
Everything is quite twisted here.
Every year this post makes me cry.
I was sad to see your youtube link is broken.
Just thought i’d let you know ;]
So sad. Ginko 100 is totally right, at first I thought that was where you were going. Thanks for reminding us.
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