We
continue our journey through the Acts of the Apostles. I love these daily updates of all that was
happening in the first days of the new Church.
Today we continue the story of the Deacon St. Stephen, how he
courageously spoke the word to power, much as the Lord Himself had done, and
how he met the same sort of fate – his death, though, by stoning, and how he
practically echoed the Lord’s words as he neared the end – “Lord, do not hold
this sin against them.” And, of course,
the very last line places this young man Saul at the scene, consenting to
Stephen’s execution.
What
are we to make of this?
First
of all, I think, it would have been quite easy for Stephen to clam up and save
his own skin, or even deny the Lord, as had Peter at the Lord’s passion. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he could
not. He was compelled to speak in truth
and courage, despite the consequences. So the first takeaway is that you and I,
like Stephen, are called to be courageous, to speak the truth even against
power, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Second,
this first reading serves as a foreshadowing of Friday’s reading, that being
the amazing conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. We see a faithful, fervent, zealous Saul
today, so attached to the faith that he was willing to oversee the death of
Stephen in an effort to stamp out the name of the Lord. But Saul had largely missed the message from
the Hebrew scriptures, one that was fulfilled in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ,
namely “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
It
is easy for us, too, I think (or at least for me) to get caught up in “the
rules” and forget that the message of the Lord was love and mercy and
conversion of heart.
But
the last thought I’ll leave you with is this – that nobody is ever beyond
hope. As we’ll hear on Friday, the Lord
can change even the hardest heart, as He did Saul’s, who became one of our
greatest saints, Paul.
And
no one, no matter what they’ve done or failed to do, is so sinful, or weak, or
unworthy that the Lord may not have a great mission in mind for them. After all, none of us is truly “worthy” of
the Lord’s calling to us, yet call He does.
It is incumbent on us, then, to listen and follow.
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