{"id":34312,"date":"2016-12-26T07:30:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-26T11:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/?p=34312"},"modified":"2016-12-26T09:45:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-26T13:45:06","slug":"st-stephen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2016\/12\/st-stephen\/","title":{"rendered":"St Stephen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/St-Stephen.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-34313 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/St-Stephen-191x300.jpg\" alt=\"st-stephen\" width=\"191\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/St-Stephen-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/St-Stephen.jpg 254w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/><\/a>The Second Day of Christmas gives us a rather unique liturgical memorial: the death of the first martyr, Saint Stephen. Today\u2019s saint is renown for his singular devotion to the Lord through adoration and service; he believed the unity of truth of the Good News given by Jesus; Stephen is recalled by the Church as being a deacon (see the Acts).<\/p>\n<p>What is revealed to us in sacred Scripture is that Stephen\u00a0became the first Christian to be killed for his faith in Jesus Christ. A predicted outcome by the Lord.\u00a0Persecution was received as a consequence to living the intensity life and holiness proposed the Lord Jesus. The Church recognized that persecution as\u00a0a clear sign that one\u00a0is on the right path: if you follow in Jesus\u2019 footsteps, you will meet the same fate He did. Saint Stephen gave his witness to Jesus and the Truth of the Gospel, but Stephen\u2019s executions\u00a0didn\u2019t accept his testimony.<\/p>\n<p>The Acts of the Apostles reveals\u00a0that they \u201c<em>stopped their ears and rushed upon him<\/em>\u201d (7:57).\u00a0What does\u00a0<em>stopped their ears<\/em> mean?\u00a0They would not listen to the reasonableness of the Good News. Convicted by truth,\u00a0Stephen didn\u2019t compromise and thus fulfilled the prophetic utterance that we read about in today\u2019s Gospel. Historically,\u00a0it was Saul as a young man, full of zeal for something other than holiness; Saul, later Paul, helped the executioners stone Stephen to death. Remarkably, Stephen died praying for his murderers.<\/p>\n<p>Are we convicted by the Truth of the Incarnation? Can we follow\u00a0and do what Saint Stephen did?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Second Day of Christmas gives us a rather unique liturgical memorial: the death of the first martyr, Saint Stephen. Today\u2019s saint is renown for his singular devotion to the Lord through adoration and service; he believed the unity of truth of the Good News given by Jesus; Stephen is recalled by the Church as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2016\/12\/st-stephen\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">St Stephen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1875,32026],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34315,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34312\/revisions\/34315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}