Collect · Dec 28, 2025 · Saints: Stories & Symbols, SESSIUNCULA, WDTPRS
28 Dec – Holy Innocents – Childermas: “They were the Church’s first blossoms”
Novus OrdoHoly Innocents, Martyrs — Dec 28, 2026, Dec 28, 2027, Dec 28, 2028
Vetus OrdoHoly Innocents — Dec 28, 2026, Dec 28, 2027, Dec 28, 2028
Deus, cuius hodierna die praeconium Innocentes Martyres non loquendo, sed moriendo confessi sunt: omnia in nobis vitiorum mala mortifica; ut fidem tuam, quam lingua nostra loquitur, etiam moribus vita fateatur.Fr. Z’s literal rendering
O God, whose public heralding the Innocent Martyrs professed this very day not by speaking but by dying; grant, we implore, that (our) life might confess Your Faith, which our tongue declares, also by (our) morals.
Today, along with it being the Sunday in the Octave, it is Childermas, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The “Coventry Carol”, a lullaby of mothers to doomed children, dates to the 16th century. It was part of a Mystery Play, “The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors”, about chapter two of the Gospel of Matthew.