Feast of Saint Stephen, First Martyr

This feast day can feel like a “buzz kill” or a wet blanket on our Christmas cheer! Echoes of “Joy to the World!” from yesterday’s celebration of the birth of Christ are still sounding in my ears. Wrapping paper, from gifts opened, is still strewn about the floor near the Christmas tree. It’s the day after Christmas and the Mass reading from the Acts of the Apostles is about a murder, the martyrdom of Stephen, the first witness to the faith. Interestingly, St. Stephen’s persecution, suffering, and death is the same promise held out to all disciples. This date is fixed early on the Church’s calendar to remind us that this Child would grow up to experience the very same thing - connecting the crib and the Cross. Although today’s reading doesn’t get us that far, St. Stephen is described in this story from Acts as bent over, crushed by stones as he prays a similar prayer found on the lips of Jesus hanging in Crucifixion on Good Friday: “…receive my spirit” and “…do not hold this sin against them.” Stephen is called a “martyr” a word that means witness. The first martyr bears explicit witness to Jesus’ own saving death.

Christmas “buzz kill” or wet blanket? Absolutely not! The story of Jesus’ birth, which we heard yesterday, gathers its force from the Cross whose shadow falls across the manger from the future. To embrace Jesus in the manger, warns St. Stephen’s tale (and that of every disciple), we must also embrace the Cross. Both are parts of the same story, a story that includes death and resurrection. St. Stephen’s feast day tests the depths of our Christmas spirit: to love Christ in the manger, we must love Christ on the Cross - not then, but now, in all of those who suffer around us. Joy to the world, the Lord is come!