ST STEPHEN

The First Martyr 

         The Church celebrates today the first martyr, St. Stephen. The word “martyr” is taken from an almost identical word in Greek: martyros. It means simply “witness.” The Christian martyrs are those who have been witnesses to Jesus Christ through the shedding of their blood, even unto death. 

         Few of us, if any, will be called to be martyrs in this sense. All of us, however, were commissioned at baptism to be witnesses to Jesus Christ in daily life. Two of the four formulas of dismissal at the end of Mass remind us of this:  

         “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.”

         “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life.” 

         What is this gospel, this Good News, that we are commissioned to proclaim -- sometimes by words, but always by the way we live our lives? It is very simple really. The Lord calls us to live as people who know that God is, that he is real; that he is a God of love, who looks for a response of love – for himself, and for our sisters and brothers; that God has made us for himself: to serve, love, and praise him here on earth, to be happy with him forever in heaven; that he is the God of the impossible, who can do for us what we can never do for ourselves: fit us for life with him, here and in eternity.

         That is the message, the Good News, to which we are called to bear witness in daily life. Does any of that come through in your life? If you were arrested tonight for being a Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? And if mere presence at Sunday Mass were not enough for conviction, would there be enough evidence then?  

         Never underestimate the power of personal witness. With great literary artistry Luke, the author of the Acts of the Apostles, from which our first reading today is taken, concludes his account of Stephen’s martyrdom with the sentence: “The witnesses meanwhile were piling their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.” This was the man who, in baptism, would receive the Christian name of Paul. He was so zealous in defending his Jewish faith that he hunted down Christians to send them to prison for heresy.  

         There is a direct line from what Saul witnessed that day, as Stephen laid down his life for Jesus Christ, to the event outside the gate of Damascus which changed Saul’s life: the blinding light from heaven and the voice that said: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Stephen’s martyrdom prepared Saul to become the apostle Paul, the one whom God had chosen to enable his Church to break out of its original Jewish shell and become the worldwide Church of the Gentiles.  

         Your life too can make a difference. The Lord wants to use your faithful witness to him in daily life to influence others, in ways you may never know – until, one day, te Lord calls you home, and you meet him, face to face.