Christ is born and the fast of Advent is done. Today the party’s just starting with ten day of Christmas untouched and yet to enjoy! Yet today in her wisdom, God used history to remind us that the party will end.
Jesus was born, lived, died, and then rose from the dead. He ascended into Heaven and His friends were empowered by God to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Things were very good in the early church.
Sadly, nothing is so good that somebody will not be offended, worried about their power, and ready to ruin the party. So it was with the early Church and Saint Stephen. His main job was to distribute food to widows and the poor. This shouldn’t have offended anyone, but he was also very, very smart and eloquent.
The establishment decided he was better off dead. The problem for the establishment is that Stephen was better off dead. They took a good man and made him a great man. They found Deacon Stephen and made him Saint Stephen, the first martyr of the church.
The mistake that tyrants always make is to kill a fine man and make him a legend. Ask Cromwell with Charles Stuart or Lenin with Nicholas II. Don’t kill the man, because you leave him to God and God can always do more with a dying man than a living one.
Why? We fail so often because of time. Time wears us down and we make bad choices that we otherwise would not make. When we are focussed on one choice at the singular moment when we are either in or out of the Kingdom of God, we tend to throw ourselves on the grace of God. At that moment, when we have freely given our will to God, divine power can transform us. Years of work can be done in a moment.
The martyr can live a lifetime in one moment and gain the holiness of decades in one key choice. Saint Stephen was beaten down with stones, first He saw God, and then he gained the power to love all of humanity. He forgave those killing him. He saw Christ and then Christ was born again. As the last stone hit him, and Stephen slumped to the ground, his next waking thought was Jesus and the glory of the Kingdom of God.
There was no more pain, no injustice, only a feast.
God is reminding us today that all they can do is kill us, but that the real Holiday will never end.
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