Readings:
• Acts 7:55-60
• Psa 97:1-2, 6-7, 9
• Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20
• Jn 17:20-26
Pope Benedict XVI, in his January 10, 2007, general audience, focused on St. Stephen the Protomartyr, touched on several points, three of which are of particular interest here.
The first is that Stephen was carrying out the “task of evangelization among his compatriots”. He and six other men of “good repute” had been chosen by the apostles to handle daily duties among the people (Acts 6:1-6). St. Luke describes Stephen as a man who was “full of grace and power”, performing “great wonders and signs among the people,” whose bold and effective witness eventually led to his arrest.
Two thousand years have passed, but the Church still has an evangelistic mission, for she has been entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ.
The second point is that Stephen, Benedict noted, “presented in Jesus’ Name a new interpretation of Moses and of God’s Law itself.” How so? He read and understood the Old Testament in the light of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. “He gave the Old Testament a Christological reinterpretation and provoked reactions from the Jews, who took his words to be blasphemous (cf. Acts 6: 11-14)”, and so was condemned to death by stoning.
Stephen’s preaching, Benedict explained, was entirely in keeping with what Jesus had passed on to the apostles, as when he walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus and showed them, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets”, that it was necessary for him to suffer before entering into his glory (Lk 24:25-27).
The Church is both a student of Scripture and a teacher of the same, entrusted by the Incarnate Word to preach the Word of God, whether it is convenient or not. And the heart of that preaching is the Cross, as Benedict emphasized, for it “stands at the center of the history of salvation as recounted in the Old Testament; it shows that Jesus, Crucified and Risen, is truly the goal of all this history.” In the words of Christ himself, as heard in the reading from the Book of Revelation: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Third, God’s plan is not always obvious or immediately understandable, but it is always at work. The persecution against the first Christians and the martyrdom of Stephen led to the Christians move out beyond Jerusalem. And so the blood of the first martyrs planted the seeds of faith in Samaria, Phoenicia, Syria, and beyond. Luke highlights one man in particular: “The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58).
This same man, Benedict noted, went from being a ruthless persecutor of the Church “to become an outstanding Apostle of the Gospel”, the Apostle Paul. After his dramatic encounter with the Risen Christ while traveling to Damascus to persecute more Christians, Paul “took up the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament made by the First Martyr”, and eventually became known as the “Apostle to the Gentiles.”
No man, as the saying goes, is an island; in the Church, no one is a saint in isolation. Each of us—whether we are a priest, a husband or wife, a cloistered nun—relies on the witness of others and on the graces that come through the Church. The Catechism, in a rather startling passage, states, “God created the world for the sake of communion with his divine life … The Church is the goal of all things” (CCC 760).
This goes hand in hand with the high priestly prayer of Jesus: “And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one…”
By ascending to the Father, the Son shows that man can dwell in glory—and is called to do so (CCC 668-70). The heavens have been opened, and God’s plan is being fulfilled, just as Stephen believed and witnessed.
(Editor’s note: This “Opening the Word” column originally appeared in the May 12, 2013, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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I believe the more Biblical word is “overcomer.” Overcoming is the willingness to reflect that reality by willingly offering myself and being progressively sanctified in my actions. Sainthood is a once-for-all, gifted reality from Christ. Hebrews 10:14 (ESV) 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Sainthood can never be an achievement we attain together…overcoming can be. Revelation 12:11 (ESV)
11 And they have conquered (overcame) him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.
We read: “The second point is that Stephen, Benedict noted, ‘presented in Jesus’ Name a new interpretation of Moses and of God’s Law itself’.”
The Father first sent the Holy Spirit to infuse the Chosen People, and then after the historic/historical Incarnation of the Second Person of the Triune One into human history, Jesus Christ has sent the Holy Spirit into the chosen Apostles at Pentecost.
In our sense of time, the path is chronological and linear; in God’s eternity is it more like one united moment?
No wonder that at the Transfiguration, Christ was conversing at once with the prophet Elijah and the lawgiver Moses, and then “later” explained this unity to his disciples on the Road to Emmaus. And, always together with the Apostolic Succession we now have the papacy of Pope Leo XIV whose theme is Church “unity”—as, what, the Mystical Body of Christ.
We are not alone.
“No man, as the saying goes, is an island; in the Church, no one is a saint in isolation. Each of us—whether we are a priest, a husband or wife, a cloistered nun—relies on the witness of others and on the graces that come through the Church.”
The entire piece about Stephen the protomartyr and without mentioning once the word “deacon”. Amazing!
Mea culpa! Is it really to be noted? Please tell me why because I want to know. Was he the first deacon?
Yes, Stephen one was of the first deacons (see Acts 6:5ff). My emphasis here was on his significant place as proto (first) martyr of the Church.
St. Stephen is often referred to as the Archdeacon in the Eastern Churches. Byzantine icons depict him holding a chain censer, as Eastern deacons perform most of the incensations during the Divine Liturgy. Even when a Byzantine deacon dies, he’s buried with a bell censer (kadilo) in hand.
While the initial martyrdoms of Christians in Israel began with the Apostles and others who were mainly, like Stephen either singular or small groups. It wasn’t until Domitian while the Apostle John was exiled to Patmos that large scale martyrdoms began leading to Rome, the blood of martyrs said to be the foundation of the Church. Robert Royale’s new work The Martyrs of the New Millennium addresses the question of the burgeoning of worldwide martyrdom of Christians, primarily Catholics.
Essayist Olson details how the early martyrdoms had an inclusive feature, in that they were not isolated killings, rather were the result of Evangelization for the Jews blasphemy, for the Romans a perceived threat to their ideological dominance. Paul was allowed while under arrest to freely preach the Gospels until he was considered a threat. The question today is the mass martyrdoms throughout Africa, to a lesser extent in the Middle East. Although Muslims commit most of these murders of Christians it’s mainly for reason that Christians are the infidel deserving of death, and who stand in the way of a universal caliphate [as referenced by Robert Royal].
It appears Christians witness to Christ simply by insisting on remaining Christians despite threat of slaughter, as was the case of the Egyptian Copts murdered in Libya, the multitude of Nigerian Christians, sporadic killings in Europe and the US. The question to consider is where this will lead. The early martyrdoms led to the growth of Christianity. Does the world wide increasing martyrdom of Christians point to rebirth and increase, or the final Judgment?
Not mentioned in my initial comment is an extremely concerning issue targeted by Royal in his new book on martyrdom, that is, the intense, at times murderous hatred of non Muslim, generally cultural relative members of society who consider Catholics and their religion a threat to freedom, antithetical to justice and equality. We experienced this trend during the Obama administration and more markedly during the Biden.
We also find this in Europe and governments aligned with the once Christian now secular humanistic EU. The EU’s deathly silence over Muslim slaughter in Nigeria, Russia’s maltreatment of Catholic priests in Ukraine. A happy note in this is just think, we can, if in witness to Christ, gain immediate entry into heaven without having to make reparation for our sins.
Your first short paragraph is very compact, and yours truly might be misreading it. On the reference to “hatred of non-Muslim” as linked (?) with those who “consider Catholics and their religion a threat to freedom,” four points and a comment:
FIRST, Islam has to do with “submission” to an autocratic and monolithic One called Allah, not in any sense the value of “freedom” as in the West, and which as you know better than I is based historically on Classical thought capped and transformed by the Triune One and Christianity.
SECOND, a perceived threat within the Islamic worldview (often expressed as jihad) is the late-stage Western materialistic and sexual corruption of “freedom.” Especially as observed by the influential and radical Sayyid Qutb after he visited the United States in the mid-20th century (leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and later executed in Egypt for his attempted assassination of the westernizer president, Gamel Addal Nassar). Note, however, that consumerism and the porn trade also infest Islamic countries….
THIRD, fully in step with your second paragraph, the point here is the underlying and chasmic contradiction between authentic Christianity (not today’s “secularist humanistic EU”) and an authentic political culture recentered on the transcendent dignity of the human person and the common good…versus deterministic Islam which leaves no space for such a differentiated autonomy and human free will (a “blasphemy” because “separate” from the singular autonomy of Allah).
FOURTH, about mention of President Obama: his “freedom of worship” restricted public “freedom of religion,” and coincides with the same wording found in the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (1981)—as contrasted with the “freedom of religion” in the earlier United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (1948). But, this is also the same problematic wording in President Roosevelt’s wartime “Four Freedoms.”
COMMENT: Secularism takes God out of the public square, while Islam takes the public square out of Man.
These are “interesting times” for the perennial Catholic Church to “dialogue” with both the post-modern world in the West and the pre-modern world of Islam. Not at all sure, here, that the languages of secular academia, of nation-state diplomacy, and of Wall Street get the big picture. Political conflicts are ultimately theological in origin.
Thanks for the tutorial on Islam of which I’m no authority.
In the immortal words of Flannery O’Connor: “She didn’t think she could be a saint but thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
I love her theology – it can be gleaned from her works.
Thank you, Carl.
In my non expert Christological interpretation of the Old Testament, I believe Stephen’s martyrdom precisely fulfilled the Isaiah 2:30 prophecy that the word of the Lord would go forth from Jerusalem, which in fact it did, to Samaria (Acts 8:5), to Antioch ( Acts 11: 19-20) and beyond.
As a follow-up of my response:
“The doctrine of sin and evil is most often present in O’Connor’s fiction. The grotesque is there to awaken us to the state of fallenness in the world.
Grace is most often present in a negative manner–at the point of awareness of our fallen state. The grotesque, often in a brutal manner, breaks in on our spiritual blindness. While O’Connor affirms the Christian doctrine of the victory of the sanctified life over sin, at times she almost indulges in a semi-Manichean dualism. Evil seems too strong in some stories” (Dr Philip Irving Mitchell Flannery O’Connor and the Theology of the Grotesque Dallas Baptist University).
My own take also agrees with Mitchell, that the spectre of the grotesque and death awakens an opportunity for salvation.
“My own take also agrees with Mitchell, that the spectre of the grotesque and death awakens an opportunity for salvation”. Death in instances takes the form of redemption by martyrdom.