Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. … Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Nothing concentrates the meaning of Christmas more directly and more disturbingly, perhaps, than the Feast of St. Stephen celebrated on the day after Christmas. He is commemorated as the first martyr, the proto-martyr, whose witness, for that is the proper meaning of martyr, namely, witness, is the prototype, the model of all martyrdom. As the lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles makes abundantly clear, Stephen achieves his eponymous crown (stephanos in Greek means crown) by losing his life not simply at the stone-throwing hands of a vicious mob but by losing himself in Jesus Christ. He has taken the Christ whose holy birth we have just celebrated as the model of life itself, the life of forgiveness. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit… Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Suddenly, the Christmas mystery illumines the mystery of the Passion of Christ and vice versa.
Following Christ is our Christian vocation. The Feast of Stephen opens out to us the radical nature of that following. It is to let the life of Christ define your outlook and being. More poignantly, it is to let the essential element of sacrifice and forgiveness have complete rule and sway. The Feast of Stephen is one of the three holy days of Christmas that open out to us the radical meaning of Christ’s holy birth. Human redemption comes with a price, the heart-blood of the Son of God become the Son of Man. Our witness, too, necessarily means sacrifice … and forgiveness.
