Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The very nature of the feast says, “You may meditate, but it is not enough. You will stumble over this feast if meditation is your highest prayer. The Church encourages you to be abandoned to contemplation.”

Why is that?

The Holy Innocents are martyrs.

The Holy Innocents died as young children.

The Holy Innocents were not baptized.

Yet they are undoubtedly, on the authority of the Church, in Heaven.

If one asks why, it is hard to explain everything in minute, logical details. One cannot reason it out very well at all. One cannot easily meditate form one point to another and end by understanding a great deal. Yes, the Innocents died for the sake of Christ. But they did not die in such a way of their own conscious will; they were too young for that. Their citizenship in Heaven is not explained easily by any dogma that I’m aware of. Whatever the truth is, it requires us to sit down and look, contemplatively and lovingly. The answer will not come to us quickly and easily, like an external truth.

What is God’s full plan of salvation? One simply comes to the conclusion that, no matter how much of the history of salvation has been revealed to us, we certainly cannot reason it all out by our own power aided by grace. We must simply look on the One who is Love, in a simple gaze of contemplative love in union of will, and that is the best and safest way to answer a question.