Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We have been focusing on the gospels of Easter over these last few weeks, but today as we prepare to close the Easter season our first reading takes us back to the beginning of the Church and specifically to the very first Martyr for the faith, Stephen.

If you recall Stephen was one of several men chosen from among the faithful of the early Church to perform ‘diakonia’ (Grk.) or service for the community. The faith, now growing beyond the small circle of faithful disciples after Jesus’ death, is experiencing growing pains and the needs of the fledgling community are becoming too much for the Apostles. To this point they have dedicated themselves to the ministry of preaching about Jesus while at the same time taking care of the community’s temporal needs. This is becoming too much for them however and so, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit men are chosen to take care of the day to day needs of the community in order to free up the Apostles for their mission given them by Jesus of preaching the word. Stephen is one of those men. However, Stephen is truly gifted with God’s grace. He is bright and articulate and beyond the work he has been given to care for the poor and the orphans of the community, he is also a wonderful witness. It is this witness which will ultimately call him to give his life for his faith.

Our reading picks up with Stephen on trial with accusations of blasphemy lodged against him. Stephen gives a very long speech, (the longest in the whole Book of the Acts of the Apostles). The mock trial, much like the trial that Jesus endured, has one aim; to put not only Stephen on trial, but this new religion as well. But Stephen endures and bests his opponents at every turn, that is until he looks up to heaven and has a vision of God’s glory and Jesus in the place of judgement at God’s right hand. In fury, his opponents can take no more and Stephen is dragged out, like Jesus, to be put to death in a horrible manner. To be stoned to death.

But not included in our selection today is a small line that immediately follows that hints that even in Stephen’s end, a new beginning is waiting to unfold.  We are told, “The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.” Saul, later Paul, will witness to Stephen’s death first as an opponent of the faith, but later as its greatest proponent and Apostle. It is Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, who will take the burgeoning Church in Jerusalem to the farthest reaches of the Empire.

Good can come from bad. The hard part about that ‘good’ is that when we are up to our eyeballs in the bad, it’s all we can see. It’s only with hindsight that we can truly look back and see how God is always at work even in the midst of the worst of times, preparing something wonderful. Paul, a witness to Stephen’s death could never have known what the Lord had planned for him. The Church, suffering the first of what will become the witness of many martyrs, could never have imagined that from the witness of their blood would come new strength and life. Who could have imagined that from such darkness, such impenetrable light would arise? But that is our God. He who made the light also made the darkness and so it has no power over him. Darkness is not dark to him who made all things. There is no place, no horror, no loss that our God cannot overcome. But we unfortunately are human and often short sighted and so sometimes we fail to see God’s wondrous hand at work. In those moments we need to have patience and the faith to hold on till we are at the other side so we can look back and appreciate that even in the bad we were never alone. The Lord was right there with us and while all we could see was darkness, he was there preparing the light.

As we prepare to celebrate Pentecost next weekend and the gift of the Holy Spirit, my prayer for each of you is one of unity and hope. Jesus’ prayer in the gospel today is an intimate one. A kind of conversation with the Father that we are meant to overhear. It’s a prayer asking God to draw us into his divine life – the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. May we each be drawn more and more deeply into that life so that regardless of where we find ourselves, we may know the amazing love our God has for us. So that if the darkness clouds our eyes, we do not fear for he who made the darkness, and the light is there with us to save us and he will never abandon us.

Easter Peace,

Fr. Steve