Feast of St. Stephen 26th Dec 2018 St. Paul’s Athens.
Rev. Canon L W Doolan
Today is the Feast of Stephen, well known even in one of our Christmas carols, Good king Wenceslaus.
We make today a very big metal and spiritual jump. Within 24hours we have gone from celebrating the birth of the Saviour to a saint who died for his faith. On the one hand the Redeemer is born, then suddenly the cost of discipleship.
In the Orthodox calendar today is kept as a Synaxis of the Holy Mother of God. For us there is a synaxis between Jesus and suffering – we point almost straight away towards Good Friday and martyrdom. Appropriately, of course, the Mother of God is no stranger to the maternal suffering of seeing her son on a cross.
Stephen’s death is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and so he is considered the proto-martyr of the Christian church – the first person recorded who died for his faith in the crucified and risen Lord. His death is also notable because it is none other than Saul, St. Paul, who oversees the stoning of Stephen – maybe this experience was a contributory factor in changing Paul’s mind and heart to open up towards receiving Jesus into his life.