Saint Stephen

So he says this, my wife recounted a miracle that happened during her imprisonment time in the Danube labor camp.

Quote, one Sunday when brought back to our prison cell, some five or six women gathered on the concrete under the bed and Acts 7.55 Again about St. Stephen.

While we were talking in a low voice under the bed about St. Stephen, we had among us a lady, formerly one of the richest ladies of Romania.

She was not a Christian.

She was in prison because her husband had been one of the political leaders of the country before the communists came to power.

This recording is in the public domain.

Saint Stephen by L.

Read for LibriVox.org by Larry Wilson.

I see that I must die.

And today in the Gospel we are seeing how the Lord can transform through His grace a fierce opponent as Saint Paul was persecuting Christians.

He witnessed the execution of Saint Stephen.

He was dilapidated.

And Paul was there, well, it's not my business.

This chapter, by the way, is in a sense gonna leave us hanging.

It's gonna set up the longer chapter 7, which is Stephen's speech right before he gets stoned.

But Acts 6 will give us two different sections here, and then next week lead into Stephen's address there, Stephen's speech before his death.

Acts chapter 6, there's 15 verses.

You can follow along with me there in your Bibles.

Then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, 'It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables.

Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; but we will give ourselves to con- continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.' And the saying pleased the whole multitude.

And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

As instances of this tendency among Israel, we remember the worship of the golden calf, the warning against sacrificing unto the he-goat, and the express admonition even of Joshua, chapter 24 verse 14, to put away the strange gods which their fathers served on the other side of the flood.

To the same effect is the retrospect in Ezekiel chapter 20 verses 5 through 8, in Amos chapter 5 verse 26, and in the address of Stephen before the Jewish council.

Yet it is remarkable that although the forms of idolatry here referred to were all practiced in Egypt, there is good reason for believing that they were not, so to speak, strictly Egyptian in their origin, but rather foreign rites imported, probably from the Phoenicians.

Footnote.

When Jochebed brought the child back to the princess, the latter gave her adopted son the Egyptian name, Moses, which curiously enough appears also in several of the old Egyptian papyri, among others, as that of one of the royal princes.

The word means brought forth or drawn out, because, as she said in giving the name, "I drew him out of the water." But for the present, Moses would probably not reside in the royal palace at Avaris.

Saint Stephen tells us that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

In no country was such value attached to education, nor was it begun so early as in Egypt.

Resistir al Espíritu Santo.

Hechos siete cincuenta y uno nos habla acerca de lo que Esteban le estaba diciendo al Sanedrín, aquellos que estaban ajusticiándolo, tirándole piedras.

Les decía: "Tercos, duros de corazón, torpes de oídos".

Imagínense, más duro le iban a dar al pobre.

In the city of God, he does not treat relic miracles as marginal folklore floating outside serious Christianity.

He discusses miracles connected to the relics of St. Stephen if the Stevens relics were brought into North Africa.

That matters because Augustine is not useful here as a naive example, but as a witness to how deeply relic devotion had entered late antique Christian imagination.

The relic was not only a devotional object.

The localization is one of Christianity's great architectural strengths.

The universal story becomes local through relics.

Christ is Lord of all, but this church has St. Stephen's arm, a fragment of the true cross, the bones of a local martyr, the veil of a holy woman, oil from a famous shrine, or dust from a sacred tomb.

The universal becomes near through particular matter.

He made in certain medallions on the vaulting, besides many stories of that saint, which are passing good, the four evangelists in a bizarre manner, seeing that, making the bust and members human, he gave to Saint John the head of an eagle, to Mark the head of a lion, to Luke that of an ox, and to Matthew alone the face of a man, or rather of an angel.

Without Arezzo also in the church of Saint Stefano, erected by the Aretines on many columns of granite and of marble, in order to honor and to preserve the memory of many martyrs who were put to death by Julian the Apostate on that spot, he painted many figures and scenes with infinite diligence, and with such a manner of coloring that they had remained very fresh up to our own day, when not many years since they were ruined.

But what was marvelous in that place, besides the stories of Saint Stephen, made with figures larger than life, was to see Joseph in a story of the Magi beside himself with joy at the coming of those kings, on whom he was gazing with most beautiful manner, while they were opening their vessels full of treasures and were offering them to him.

A Madonna in that same church, who is handing a rose to the infant Christ, was and still is held in so great veneration among the Aretines as being a very beautiful and devout figure, that without regard for any difficulty or expense, when the church of Saint Stefano was thrown to the ground, they cut the wall away around her, and binding it together ingeniously, they bore her into the city and placed her in a little church, in order to honor her as they do with the same devotion that they showed to her before.

Nor should this appear anything wonderful, because it having been something peculiar and natural to Spinello to give to his figures a certain simple grace, which has much of the modest and the saintly, it appears that the figures that he made of saints, and above all the Virgin, breathe out a certain quality of the saintly and the divine, which moves men to hold them in supreme reverence.

As it may be seen, apart from the said figure, in the Madonna that is on the Canto degli Alberoti, and in that which is on the outer wall of the Pieve in the Sertoria, and in one of the same sort likewise that is on the Canto del Canale.

As instances of this tendency among Israel, we remember the worship of the golden calf, the warning against sacrificing unto the he-goat, and the express admonition even of Joshua, chapter 24 verse 14, to put away the strange gods which their fathers served on the other side of the flood.

To the same effect is the retrospect in Ezekiel chapter 20 verses 5 through 8, in Amos chapter 5 verse 26, and in the address of Stephen before the Jewish council.

Yet it is remarkable that although the forms of idolatry here referred to were all practiced in Egypt, there is good reason for believing that they were not, so to speak, strictly Egyptian in their origin, but rather foreign rites imported, probably from the Phoenicians.

Footnote.

The word means brought forth or drawn out, because, as she said in giving the name, I drew him out of the water.

But for the present Moses would probably not reside in the royal palace at Avaris.

Saint Stephen tells us that he was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

In no country was such value attached to education, nor was it begun so early as in Egypt.

And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him, unquote.

So again, what Jesus failed as a question and St. Peter declared openly, St. Stephen witnessed with his own eyes just prior to his martyrdom.

He's the first martyr.

This is from Acts 7, verses 55 through 56.

Quote, But he, St. Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

And he said, quote, Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.

Unquote.