In today’s
first reading, Acts 7: 51-8:1a, we are presented with the martyrdom of St.
Stephen. His speaking of the truth infuriated the people, the elders, and the
scribes. What truths? That the people’s
ancestors persecuted/killed the prophets, those persons who foretold the coming
of the Messiah; that they themselves killed the Messiah and rejected “the law…transmitted
by angels.” Stephen referred to the
people as “stiff-necked,” “uncircumcised in heart and ears,” meaning that their
ears and hearts were not committed to the covenant God made with them when He
said “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be
their God, and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 32: 38). In the presence of men determined to
kill him, “Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven
and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and
Stephen said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at
the right hand of God.’ But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears,”
and proceeded to stone Stephen to death.
Paul, standing off to the side, witnessed the killing and approved of it.
Who am I in
this Scripture passage? Stephen, who had the courage to speak the truth, to call
a spade a spade, to witness to the Lord Jesus in spite of the possibility of
being scorned, persecuted, killed? Am I
one of the persons covering my ears and shouting loudly when the truth is being
proclaimed by another? Am I a person, who in one’s past, persecuted someone to
whom I did not want to listen? Or am I Paul, standing off to the side,
approving of the persecution of another by word or deed?
