On the Fourth Day of Christmas: Massacre

Fra Angelico's rendering of the massacre of the Holy Innocents at San Marco in Florence. This day grieves me so much. It's so difficult to reconcile this, an unintended (and yet perhaps predictable) consequence of the birth of our savior who was deemed a threat to the ruling powers that be, so that violence was the thought the proper and safe answer to God coming to live among us. '

Herod was a bad man and a bad king, no doubt. But he was not some kind of anomaly. This is what we humans sometimes do to try to make ourselves feel safe.