Homily for the Feast of Saint Stephen, First Martyr

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.

Saint Luke the Evangelist devotes two entire chapters of the Acts of the Apostles to the call, witness, preaching, and martyrdom of Saint Stephen. Stephen has been appointed among the first of the deacons to assist the Apostles by ensuring that the Greek-speaking widows and orphans are treated as justly as the Hebrew-speaking widows and orphans. This assignment is characterized by the universal character of Christ’s saving mission, that He has come to save all people without distinction. The universal character of Christ’s saving work and the Stephen’s participation in that mission is challenged by the partisanship of the “so-called Synagogue of Freedmen” who accuse Stephen of rejecting the Temple and of betraying the Mosaic Covenant. Stephen then systematically interprets all of salvation history as pointing to Christ beginning with Abraham, and continuing with Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Solomon, and all the prophets. Stephen demonstrates that he has not rejected the Old Covenant of Judaism but sees the Covenant as fulfilled in Jesus Christ — the new Temple.

Judaism does not reject Stephen or Christ but rather the partisan agents of the Synagogue of Freedmen, many of the Pharisees, and the Sanhedrin, who have adopted a definition of Judaism based not on the Covenant but on a partisan interpretation according to tribe and race, reject Stephen and Christ whom he represents.

The centrality of Christ, who was born of Mary to save all people from their sins, is the motivation for Stephen’s charity for the widows and orphans who were prone to exclusion. This should be our motivation for our ministry of the Word and of Charity as well. The Church counts on each of us, bishop and deacons, to maintain the centrality of Christ in every part of our life and ministry because there is such a temptation to subordinate the Gospel to partisan ideologies in our society and even within the Church. The Holy Spirit alone saves us from such destructive sins against the unity of the Church and we pray and strive for authentic communion in the Church.

Saint Stephen, through his love and ministry for Christ, especially incarnate in the poor, is configured by love to Jesus Christ true God and true man. Stephen’s death shows that discipleship and the ministry of deacons is not simply about conveying values or social work, but really involves a conformity to Christ — not just in His words, not just in His deeds, but in His very life and being. Stephen’s death is configured to Christ because his life was first configured through his preaching the truth and his love for the poor and marginalized.

It is in this way that Stephen the Deacon made incarnate the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, first introducing Saul of Tarsus to Jesus even as Saul was taking part in Stephen’s murder. This act of selfless love on Stephen’s part, and not just Stephen’s eloquent apologetics, prepared Saul for his dramatic encounter with Christ where he was knocked off his horse and temporarily blinded that he might be given true sight as Saint Paul.

In witnessing the martyrdom of Stephen, Paul meets Christ and is affected by Him, to the point of preparing him to receive the forgiveness for which Stephen prayed in imitating Christ not only in his life but in his death. Stephen’s ministry and death are good reminders for us in this current time of rancor and discord in the Church that none of the martyrs died angry. As Pope Saint Paul VI wrote in Evangelii Nuntiandi, “The person who has been evangelized goes on to evangelize others. Here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization: it is unthinkable that a person should accept the Word and give himself to the kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in his turn.” (EV #24)

You and I, deacons and bishop, have suffered in our ministry false witness, persecution, and rejection to the extent that we have maintained the centrality of Christ to the life of the Church. God gives us hope through the witness of Saint Stephen and that of Saint Paul, that in these sufferings the Gospel is shared and will eventually be accepted even if it is currently resisted. Such is God’s Providence and the hope that the Christ Child brings and that we celebrate in the offering of this Eucharist.