Acts 6:8-15

Acts 6:8-15

Stephen, filled with grace and power,

was working great wonders and signs among the people.

Certain members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen,

Cyreneans, and Alexandrians,

and people from Cilicia and Asia,

came forward and debated with Stephen,

but they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.

Then they instigated some men to say,

“We have heard him speaking blasphemous words

against Moses and God.”

They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes,

accosted him, seized him,

and brought him before the Sanhedrin.

They presented false witnesses who testified,

“This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law.

For we have heard him claim

that this Jesus the Nazorean will destroy this place

and change the customs that Moses handed down to us.”

All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him

and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

Opening Prayer: Lord God, as I contemplate the figures of the early Church, help me to be inspired by their example of zeal and courage. I want to spread the Gospel in my community and family. Grant me the gift of counsel so that I know when to speak and what to say.

Encountering the Word of God

1. Stephen’s Witness to Christ: In the First Reading, the deacon Stephen is presented as a model of a Christian believer who accomplishes the works of God. Stephen believed in the one whom God the Father sent to save the world from sin and death. He preached without fear because he knew that his message was from the Holy Spirit. Stephen took up the difficult theme of freedom from the old Law of Moses and the end of the old Temple worship. Stephen had powerful insights, and it would take almost two decades for the Church to clarify his points at the Council of Jerusalem in A.D. 49. The people, the elders, and the scribes who heard Stephen accused him of saying things against “this holy place” (the Temple in Jerusalem) and the Law of Moses. Something similar happened at Jesus’ trial. There, the religious authorities accused Jesus of saying “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands” (Mark 14:58). What Jesus actually said was: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Only after Jesus was raised from the dead did his disciples come to understand that he was speaking about the destruction of the temple of his body. The risen, glorified body of Jesus is the New Temple, present in mystery in the Church on earth, where God is worshiped in spirit and in truth. 

2. The Eucharistic Sacrifice: While Peter preached in the Temple, Stephen was the first disciple to preach in the synagogues. Stephen was emboldened and empowered by the Spirit because the Jerusalem synagogues were the strongholds of the Pharisees. Opposed to Stephen were the Hellenists of the “synagogue of the Freedmen” (Acts 6:9). They accused Stephen of “blasphemous words against Moses and God.” We get a sense of his preaching at his trial. Just as Jesus was accused of blasphemy because he claimed equality with God as the divine Messiah, so also Stephen was accused of blasphemy because he argued that the Temple and the Law of Moses were transitory, and brought to fulfillment in Jesus. For example, Christians would come to understand that the Old Testament animal sacrifices in the Old Temple were completed and surpassed by the sacrament of the Eucharistic sacrifice in the New Temple. In this great sacrament, we enter into communion with Jesus, we are separated from sin, and we are filled with grace. In the mass, we are united with the heavenly liturgy and anticipate the heavenly glory of eternal life (CCC, 1326).

3. The Face of an Angel: Just as false witnesses were brought forward to accuse Jesus in his trial, so also false witnesses were brought forward to accuse Stephen. “Before Stephen begins his defense, the Sanhedrin members all looked intently at him, as those in the synagogue had looked at Jesus before his inaugural address in Luke 4:20. Paul uses the same term to refer to the Israelites’ looking at the radiant face of Moses (2 Cor 3:7, 13). Here God’s intervention on Stephen’s behalf is revealed in that ‘his face was like the face of an angel.’ That is, his face was shining, as angelic ‘faces’ perceived to be. Stephen’s radiant face recalls Moses after he came down from Mount Sinai (Exod 34:29-30) and Jesus as he spoke with Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration (Luke 9:29-31). As Moses’ face shone after seeing God, Stephen’s face shone on seeing the glorified Son of Man (see Acts 7:55-56). Before Stephen can even begin his defense against their false charges, God is silently testifying to him by manifesting heavenly glory on his face” (Kurz, Acts of the Apostles, 116).

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, as I read the history of the early Church this Easter, inspire me by the example of so many men and women who gave their lives for you. May I be led by the Spirit, as they were, to proclaim the Gospel of your Kingdom.

Living the Word of God: How can I, like the deacon Saint Stephen, proclaim the Kingdom of God and the Paschal Mystery of Jesus today? How does my face radiate the presence of God?