TEN YEARS GONE: Hope for Children — All of Them (Revised for Lent)

When Innocence Threatens Power

First published Monday, December 28, 2015. Revised Sunday, March 1, 2026.

…your children shall come back to their own country.

— Jeremiah 31

This reflection was first written on December 28, 2015 — the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when the Church remembers the slaughter of children at the hands of Herod.

Today, in Lent, it reads differently.

Lent is not sentimental. It is the season in which we face what human power does when it feels threatened. The Cross itself is the ultimate exposure of that pattern.

Herod killed children because he feared losing control.

The massacre of the innocent has always been one of the clearest signs of corrupted authority. Throughout history, children have been targeted to terrorize populations, break morale, assert dominance, or secure convenience.

Jeremiah’s promise — “your children shall come back” — is spoken into a world where children were lost to exile and violence. It is a promise of restoration where devastation once stood.

When I wrote this in 2015, I spoke sharply about modern justifications for the destruction of unborn life. That sharpness came from conviction: if life is sacred, then it is sacred at its most vulnerable stages.

Ten years later, the conviction remains, but it requires steadiness.

To be “pro-life” cannot mean only opposition to abortion. It must also mean reverence for children once they are born. It must mean resistance to systems that exploit them, neglect them, indoctrinate them, or treat them as instruments of political gain.

The issue is not merely population numbers, environmental theory, or economic sustainability. The deeper question is this:

Do we believe that life — even inconvenient, fragile, dependent life — bears the image of God?

Lent forces us to confront a sobering truth: humanity often responds to perceived threat with elimination. The Cross is the supreme example. When innocence stands before power, power frequently chooses removal.

But the Christian response is not terror.

It is reverence.

We revere the child.
We protect the vulnerable.
We resist the reflex to destroy what unsettles us.

Jeremiah’s promise echoes forward: children will return. Life will not be extinguished forever. God’s purposes for humanity are not thwarted by violence.

The Word of God is sometimes a sharpened sword. It cuts through self-justification on every side. It does not spare the Left. It does not spare the Right. It confronts all of us with the same question:

What do we do when life interrupts our plans?

Herod chose fear.
Christ chose sacrifice.

Lent calls us to choose carefully.