Day: December 26, 2024

December 26, 2024
Saint Patrick Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Acts 6:8-10, 7:54-59
Psalm 31:3cd-4, 6 and 8ab, 16bc and 17
Matthew 10:17-22

Christmas, the liturgical season of the birth of Emmanuel as an Infant in a Manger, is a liturgical season that is filled with the commemoration of significant martyrs: the Holy Innocents slaughtered by Herod; Saint Thomas Becket murdered in his cathedral; and today the Church gives us this Feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr and among the first deacons in the life and history of the Church. This first day of the Christmas season, the Church celebrates the feast of the first martyr of the Faith, Stephen, whose murder reveals his complete configuration to Christ including his passion, death, and forgiveness of his murderers. It seems that the Church snaps us away from the sweet image of the Infant in the Manger with Mary and Joseph, and the angels and shepherds, to the jarringly violent murder of Stephen. The Christ Child truly is a sign of contradiction.