[Question:]{.underline} How did the Holy Innocents go to heaven?
[Answer:]{.underline} The Holy Innocents, being honored by the Church as saints, must be in heaven. But how could they get there, given that they neither received the sacrament of baptism nor were capable of baptism of desire?
Two responses are given to this question by Catholic Tradition. The first concerns the sacraments of the Old Law, of which Circumcision was the most important. If it is of Faith that only the sacraments of the New Law (that is the seven sacraments with which we are familiar) contain the grace that they signify and confer it on souls that place no obstacle (Council of Trent, Session vii, cn 6, Db 849), and if the Council of Florence declares that the sacraments “of the old law did not effect grace, but only pronounced that it should be given through the passion of Christ” (Db 695), it does not follow that these sacraments of the Old Law could not be in some way a vehicle by which grace was given to both infants and adults who were circumcised.
It is St. Thomas Aquinas who explains the difference between the sacraments of the Old Law, and those of the New Law, asking himself the question as to whether and in what way the sacraments of the Old Law give grace (IIIa, Q, 62, a.6):
It cannot be said that the sacraments of the Old Law conferred sanctifying grace of themselves, i.e. by their own power: since thus Christ`s Passion would not have been necessary, according to Gal. 2:21: “If justice be by the Law, then Christ died in vain.”…The sacraments of the New Law do reasonably derive the power of justification from Christ`s Passion; whereas the sacraments of the Old Law did not.
Nevertheless, the Fathers of the Old Law were justified by faith in Christ`s passion, just as we are. And the sacraments of the Old Law were a kind of protestation of that faith, inasmuch as they signified Christ`s Passion and its effects. It is therefore manifest that the sacraments of the Old Law were not endowed with any power by which they conduced to the bestowal of justifying grace: and they merely signified faith by which men were justified.
Yet despite this difference, he points out that there can be no doubt that grace was bestowed by circumcision, since all the Fathers are agreed in affirming that it remits original sin, which is not possible without sanctifying grace.
We must say, therefore, that grace was bestowed in circumcision as to all the effects of grace, but not as in Baptism. Because in Baptism grace is bestowed by the very power of Baptism itself, which power Baptism has as the instrument of Christ`s Passion already consummated. Whereas circumcision bestowed grace, inasmuch as it was a sign of faith in Christ`s future passion; so that the man who was circumcised, professed to embrace that faith; whether, being an adult, he made profession for himself, or, being a child, someone else made profession for him. (III, Q. 70, a.4).
To express this in another way, we would say that Circumcision was not an instrumental cause of sanctification, deriving its power from the sacred Humanity of Christ, as is Baptism. It, however, bestows grace as an outward sign in the Faith of Christ to come. All the Catholic authors accept that as such it bestowed grace upon infants who were circumcised in the Jewish rite before Christ`s Passion, of which it was a symbol. Consequently, there can be no doubt that the Holy Innocents were purified from original sin and in the state of sanctifying grace at the time of their murder by Herod, since all were circumcised and under the age of two years, and hence under the age of reason.
However, if the Catholic Church has honored these Holy Innocents in all the rites during the Octave of Christmas since at least the fifth century, it is not just because they were circumcised. It is because it considers them as martyrs, having died not by will, but by blood, and having died not only for Christ, but actually in His place. It is inconceivable that Almighty God would not have given them an extraordinary grace at that very moment of their martyrdom, which is why we celebrate their feast as saints. Allow me to quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. viii, p. 419, which in turn quotes St. Augustine: “The Church venerates these children as martyrs (flores martyrum — the flowers of the martyrs); they are the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution; they died not only for Christ, but in his stead.”
The prayers of the traditional Roman Breviary express this Faith in the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents. Take, for example, this verse from the hymn at Lauds:
All hail! Ye infant martyr flowers
Cut off in life`s first dawning hours,
As rosebuds snapt in tempest strife
When Herod sought your Savior`s live.
Nevertheless, it is certainly true that the Holy Innocents could not immediately enter heaven when they were slaughtered. The gates of heaven were to remain closed for another thirty-three years until the Passion, and so they were to wait in Abraham`s bosom, in the limbo of the Fathers, before being delivered therefrom by Christ`s death on the Cross. In this they differ from the martyrs that followed Christ, and this used to be expressed in the liturgy by the use of Violet vestments for their feast. But this takes nothing away from the special grace they received, nor their special sanctity by identification with Christ.
Let us conclude with this text from St. Augustine, incorporated into the Second Nocturn of Matins: “In full right do we celebrate the heavenly birthday of these children whom the world caused to be born unto an eternally blessed life rather than that from their mother`s womb, for they attained the grace of everlasting life before the enjoyment of the present.”
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.