The occasion of Stephen’s martyrdom, of course, was a dispute between Christians of Jewish origin and those from the Greek-speaking Diaspora. Stephen, a Deacon of Greek origin, witnesses to the Lord among the Hellenists, to the point that the Hebrews begin to resent his insistence that the Law and the prophets can only be understood in the light of Christ.
A Good Deacon Dies
St Gregory of Nyssa called Deacon Stephen “a good man…sustained by the goodness of his will to serve the poor and defeated his enemies by the Spirit's power of the truth.”2 We are told that he preached that truth unsparingly, declaring to all who would hear that Jesus Christ was Lord.
And they hated him for it, including the young rabbi Saul, our patron, who in his pre-conversion days desired the death of those troublesome followers of Christ, especially the ones who were Greek!
So there he is, up there, our own Saul, always dressed in red in Clare Leighton’s windows. There he is, at the top left of the great transept window of the Persecutions. There sits the red-robed Saul, among the rabbis, scratching his beard in skepticism as the blue cloaked Stephen defends himself against charges of heresy. The young Deacon’s face, Saint Luke tells us, looked like an angel.
But they killed him anyway. As we move to the bottom center of the window, we see the stoning of Stephen, who has been forced to his knees as members of the Sanhedrin drop big rocks on him.
What a contrast between the meek and dying Stephen and the arrogant figure of Saul, holding some of the garments in his arms, while others lie at his feet. For Saul, we are told "approved of his death."3
While there lies the young blue cloaked martyr, looking through the stones and angry faces, straight up to the top of the window, at the face of the Lord, to whom he prays: “receive my spirit.”
The Martyr
Saint Stephen, our first martyr, was also, in the words of the early Church historian Eusebius, the “perfect martyr,”4 for he preached Christ Jesus not only by “wonders and signs among the people,”5 but by the manner of his death.
As the crucified Christ prayed for the forgiveness of his enemies,6 so did the dying Stephen beg the Lord “not [to] hold this sin against them.”7
As the crucified Christ commended his spirit to the Father,8 so did Stephen pray “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”9
And like the Lord was the firstborn of many brothers,10 so Saint Stephen was the grain of wheat which falls to the earth and dies, though bearing much fruit. For, in the words of Tertullian, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”11
Modern Day Martyrs
For even today, that seed continues to sprout, as the example of Saint Stephen, the prototypical martyr, proclaims the Cross in every land and time, down through the intervening Christian Centuries, even to our own day.
Like three years ago in Yemen, where four Missionaries of Charity, refused to leave their home for the elderly poor, despite the danger. So, one day as they were preparing lunch, they were shot dead by men who then vandalized the crucifixes and statues in their small church. As the nuns bled to death, they are said to have recited from memory one of their morning prayers, written by Mother Theresa:
Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward.
Or, just two years ago, when the 85 year old Father Jacques Hamel arrived for the nine o’clock Mass in the little parish Church of Saint-Étienne. There he met the usual modest congregation of three sisters, an elderly couple married 64 years and a younger man. It was during the Prayer of the Faithful that two knife-wielding anti-Christians rushed into the Church and attacked the priest. As Father was heard to shout “Out with you, Satan,” they slit his throat.
And the martyrdoms continue. In the first five months of this year alone, more than 20,000 Christians have been forced to flee their homes in Central Africa, the southern Philippines, Nigeria, India and Sri Lanka. In Jolo (Southern Phillipines) 30 were killed in January, another 130 in Nigeria in March and a further 250 were slain in Sri Lanka, just for going to Church on Easter Sunday. They each knew there was danger in following the Cross, but that did not stop them from proclaiming him as their Lord and Savior, just like the Deacon Stephen.
“It might be hard for us to believe,” Pope Francis recently said,” but there are more martyrs today than in the first centuries [of the Church].”12 But all martyrs, from Stephen to Sri Lanka, are mirrors of the the Lord upon the Cross, “united by the same suffering for the name of Jesus, [and] now [sharing] the same glory.”13
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Blood spatter mark a wall and statue after a blast at St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday
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1 - Acts 6:8.
2 - Sermo in Sanctum Stephanum II: GNO X, 1, Leiden 1990, 98.
3 - Acts 8:1.
4 - Die Kirchengeschichte v. 2,5: GCS II, I, Lipsia 1903, 430.
5 - Acts 6:8.
6 - Luke 23:34.
7 - Acts 7:60.
8 - Luke 23:46.
9 - Acts 7:59.
10 - Romans 8:29.
11 - Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 50.
12 - Pope Francis, 5 March 2019.
13 - Pope Francis, February 9, 2019.
