May 7th, 2019: Acts
7:52-8:1.
Our first reading tells
the story of St. Stephen, the Church’s first martyr. The word “martyr” is taken
from the Greek word: 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, the
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.
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 our first
reading today, 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, you meet the
Lord, face to face.
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