Saint Stephen

Saint Stephen, known as the Protomartyr of Christianity, was a first-century Hellenistic Jew and one of the seven deacons chosen by the early Christian community in Jerusalem, as recorded in the sixth and seventh chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. His Greek name Stephanos means crown or wreath. The New Testament gives no information about his birth, parentage, or place of origin. He is identified among the Greek-speaking Jewish Christians, sometimes called Hellenists, who formed part of the Jerusalem church in the years immediately following the death and resurrection of Jesus. Acts describes him as a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, full of grace and power, who did great wonders and signs among the people.

When a dispute arose because the widows of the Hellenists were being neglected in the daily distribution, the Twelve Apostles asked the community to select seven men of good standing to oversee this service so that the apostles might devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Stephen was named first among the seven, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of Antioch. He soon became known not only for this charitable work but for his preaching. Members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen, which included Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and Jews from Cilicia and Asia, disputed with him. Unable to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke, they suborned false witnesses who accused him of blasphemy against Moses and against God, and of speaking against the holy place and the law, claiming that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the Temple and change the customs handed down by Moses.

Brought before the Sanhedrin, Stephen delivered a long discourse that surveyed Israelite history from Abraham through Joseph, Moses, and the building of the Temple. He argued that the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands, quoting the prophet Isaiah, and he charged his hearers with being stiff-necked, uncircumcised in heart and ears, always resisting the Holy Spirit, persecuting the prophets, and becoming betrayers and murderers of the Righteous One whose coming the prophets had announced. The council was enraged. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and said that he saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They cried out, covered their ears, rushed upon him, dragged him out of the city, and stoned him. As they stoned him, he called upon the Lord Jesus to receive his spirit and, falling to his knees, cried with a loud voice that the Lord should not hold this sin against them. Then he died. Witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul, who approved of the killing. Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him. The event, placed by most historians in the mid-30s of the first century, precipitated a persecution that scattered the Jerusalem church and helped carry the Christian message beyond the city.

From the earliest period Stephen was venerated as the first martyr after Christ. His feast is kept on 26 December in the Roman Catholic Church and in many Western traditions, immediately after Christmas, and on 27 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 415 a priest named Lucian of Caphargamala reported the discovery of relics attributed to Stephen following a vision; they were brought to Jerusalem and later portions were translated to Constantinople and to Rome, where they are associated with the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. Stephen is invoked as patron of deacons, altar servers, bricklayers, stonemasons, coffin makers, and those afflicted with headaches, among other groups. His dying prayer for his persecutors, modeled on the words of Jesus, has been a lasting model of Christian forgiveness, and his witness as the first to die for the name of Jesus has remained central to Christian memory of the apostolic age.