What Earth Concealed, Heaven Revealed
MASS Sedérunt
LESSON Acts 6: 8-10; 7: 54-59
GOSPEL St Matthew 23: 34-39
HOMILIST Mt Revd Jerome Lloyd OSJV
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Holy Church celebrates Saint Stephen twice in her sacred year. On the day after Christmas, while she is still kneeling before the crib, she commemorates his martyrdom: the first blood shed for the newborn King. Today, however, she celebrates the finding of his sacred body, long hidden beneath the earth and restored to the veneration of the faithful.
The feast is traditionally called the Invention of Saint Stephen, using that word in its older sense: not the fabrication of something new, but the discovery of something precious that had been lost. The title itself gives us the first lesson of the feast. Men may bury the truth, but they cannot destroy it. They may silence the witness, break his body and consign his memory to oblivion; yet God knows where His saints are buried. At the hour appointed by Providence, the earth must surrender what persecution entrusted to it.
The Introit places upon the lips of Saint Stephen the words of the Psalmist: “Princes sat, and spoke against me; and the wicked persecuted me: help me, O Lord my God, for Thy servant was employed in Thy justifications.” The princes sit in judgement; Stephen stands in fidelity. They possess office, numbers and violence; he possesses the truth. They appear to determine his fate, yet it is Stephen who is free and they who are enslaved. They are prisoners of hatred, while he, even beneath the stones, already looks into the liberty of Heaven.
After his martyrdom, devout men took care for Stephen’s burial and made great mourning over him. In time, however, the place of his grave disappeared from common memory. Nearly four centuries later, in the year 415, during the episcopate of John of Jerusalem, a priest named Lucian reported visions revealing a burial place near Jerusalem. There were found remains venerated as those of Stephen, Gamaliel, Nicodemus and Abibas, the son of Gamaliel. The discovery and the rapid spread of Saint Stephen’s relics belong to the history of the early fifth century; the fuller circumstances belong to the venerable legend received by Christian tradition.
According to that tradition, Gamaliel had received Stephen’s body and buried it upon his own estate. Around that grave Providence gathers a remarkable company. Gamaliel was the celebrated Pharisee and doctor of the Law who had warned the Sanhedrin not to fight against a work that might prove to be from God. Saul could later say with certainty that he had been educated at Gamaliel’s feet and had lived according to the strict observance of the Pharisees. Tradition also associates Stephen with Gamaliel’s school, although Scripture does not expressly call Stephen a Pharisee or identify him as Gamaliel’s pupil.
Yet Stephen’s great discourse before the Sanhedrin reveals a man profoundly formed in the sacred history of Israel. He speaks not as an outsider ignorant of the Law, but as one who knows Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the tabernacle and the Temple from within, and who perceives that all of them point towards Jesus Christ. Saul knew the same Law and breathed the same atmosphere of learned Pharisaic zeal. Thus Stephen and Saul stand before us as two men formed by the religious world of Israel, perhaps even by the same master, yet moving for the moment in opposite directions.
Stephen sees that the Law reaches its fulfilment in Christ. Saul, not yet enlightened by grace, believes that fidelity to the traditions of his fathers requires the suppression of those who proclaim Christ. One has passed through the letter into the spirit; the other clings so fiercely to the letter that he assists at the murder of the man in whom the Spirit speaks.
There is a solemn irony here. Gamaliel had warned the Sanhedrin: “Refrain from these men, and let them alone; for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it.” Yet his own brilliant pupil Saul stands at Stephen’s execution, consenting to precisely that violence against which his teacher had cautioned him.
Sacred learning, then, is not enough. A man may know every text and yet resist the Truth to which every text bears witness. Both Stephen and Saul possessed learning; Stephen was also “full of grace and fortitude.” That was the decisive difference. Grace made him see in the Scriptures not merely a system to be defended, but Christ to be adored.
According to the ancient legend, the place of burial was symbolised by baskets filled with flowers: white roses for the confessors and red roses for Stephen, crimson with the blood of martyrdom. The image is profoundly Christian. The world had cast Stephen away as refuse outside the city; Heaven revealed him as a vessel filled with roses. What appeared to his murderers as disgrace had become glory. What they buried in contempt, God brought forth in honour.
The relics of Saint Stephen were carried through the Christian world. Saint Augustine records the devotion and favours associated with them in North Africa. Other relics were taken to Constantinople, and Roman tradition venerates the Protomartyr beside Saint Lawrence in the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls. There the two great deacons rest together: Stephen, stoned outside Jerusalem; Lawrence, burned upon the gridiron at Rome. Both served the altar, both ministered to the poor, and both completed their diaconal service by offering themselves with Christ.
Yet the Church does not celebrate this feast merely because sacred bones were found. Its spiritual heart is contained in the Collect: “Grant us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to imitate what we worship, that we may learn to love our enemies also; for we celebrate the finding of him who knew how to pray even for his persecutors.”
“To imitate what we worship.” These words allow us no merely sentimental devotion. It is possible to honour a saint outwardly while resisting everything that made him holy. We may praise Stephen’s courage while remaining silent when truth becomes costly. We may admire his charity while preserving resentment against those who have injured us. We may incense his relics and yet refuse to imitate his prayer.
The Church therefore asks not only that Stephen’s body should have been found beneath the earth, but that Stephen’s spirit should be found within us.
The Epistle tells us that Stephen was “full of grace and fortitude.” Grace comes first. Christian courage is not stubbornness, aggression or delight in controversy. Stephen was strong because he was full of God. He had ceased to live for human applause, and therefore human displeasure had lost its power over him.
Those disputing with him “were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit that spoke.” They answered reason with rage. They gnashed their teeth; they stopped their ears; they ran violently upon him. Their problem was not that the truth had failed to appear, but that they no longer wished to hear it. Error becomes most dangerous when it ceases to argue and begins to silence.
Yet while they closed their ears, Stephen opened his eyes. “Behold,” he said, “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.” The Church repeats this vision in the Alleluia and again in the Communion antiphon.
Elsewhere Christ is commonly described as seated at the right hand of the Father. Here He stands. The Fathers saw in this the Lord rising to receive His first martyr, the heavenly Judge standing as witness for the man condemned by an earthly court, the King honouring the soldier who is about to enter beneath the standard of the Cross.
Stephen is driven to his knees while Christ stands. His enemies imagine that they are casting him down; in reality, Heaven has risen to receive him.
But the greatest miracle of that hour was not the opened Heaven. It was the opened heart of Stephen. As the stones fell, he prayed: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then, falling upon his knees, he cried with a loud voice: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Here the martyr becomes the perfect image of Christ. Our Lord upon the Cross had said, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Stephen says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Christ had prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Stephen prays, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
The martyr is not merely one who dies because he is a Christian. He is one in whom the Passion of Christ becomes visible again. The disciple has become like the Master.
And among those for whom Stephen prayed stood Saul. He guarded the garments of the executioners and consented to the killing. He departed believing that he had witnessed the destruction of an enemy of God. In reality, he had been caught within the prayer of a saint.
The prayer uttered beneath the stones followed Saul until grace cast him to the ground on the road to Damascus. He who had stopped his ears at Stephen’s testimony would hear the voice of Christ. He who had watched Stephen gaze into the opened Heaven would himself be blinded by heavenly light. The Pharisee who guarded the garments of the stone-throwers would become the Apostle who counted all things as loss for the knowledge of Christ.
Every Saul may yet become a Paul. That is why the Christian may never surrender to hatred.
To love one’s enemies does not mean pretending that evil is good. Stephen did not flatter his persecutors. He accused them plainly of resisting the Holy Ghost and betraying the Just One. His charity did not silence truth, and his truth did not extinguish charity. He spoke severely because he desired their conversion; he prayed tenderly because he desired their salvation.
Much that passes for charity is cowardice: it refuses to name evil lest anyone be offended. Much that passes for zeal is wounded pride: it names evil because it enjoys condemning the sinner. Stephen shows us the Catholic union of truth and love. He speaks without compromise and dies without hatred.
At Holy Communion the Church places Stephen’s words once more upon our lips: “I see the heavens opened, and Jesus standing on the right hand of the power of God: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and lay not this sin to their charge.”
Stephen saw Christ standing in Heaven; we receive that same Christ veiled beneath the Sacred Host. He who stood to welcome the martyr comes now to dwell within us. We cannot receive the Victim of Calvary while deliberately preserving hatred. We cannot ask Christ to enter our hearts while keeping one chamber locked against an enemy.
The earth surrendered the body of Stephen. This feast asks us to surrender what lies buried within ourselves: old injuries, carefully preserved grievances, accusations rehearsed in the mind, and the secret wish that those who wounded us should suffer as we have suffered.
Forgiveness does not declare injustice to be just. It does not forbid correction, discipline or defence of the innocent. It means refusing to allow another person’s sin to reproduce itself within our own soul. It means desiring that the sinner become a saint rather than merely that he be defeated.
Carissimi, the finding of Saint Stephen remains incomplete unless something of Stephen is found in us: his understanding of the Scriptures, his fidelity beneath persecution, his eyes fixed upon Heaven, and above all his prayer for those who cast the stones.
May the Protomartyr obtain for us the grace to imitate what we worship: to speak the truth without fear, to suffer without bitterness, and to forgive without weakening justice. Then, when our own hour comes, we too may see the heavens opened and Christ standing to receive those who have been faithful unto death.
Lord Jesus, receive our spirits; and lay not their sins—or ours—to our charge.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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