Today we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr for Jesus Christ. At first, the celebration of the first Christian martyr can appear a bit odd within the octave of Christmas. This can appear all the odder as we come to the end of our week meditating upon joy. What has martyrdom to do with joy and with Christmas?
However, when we look at the account of Stephen’s death, it is striking how he exudes a spirit of joy, peace, and praise in the face of his own death. Stephen’s martyrdom reveals the power of Christian joy – as a quality of the divine – in that one is able to remain joyful in the face of persecution and even death. One of the greatest witnesses that the saints and the martyrs teach us is that Christian joy is not tied to a life without suffering or to moments of celebration alone, but rather it is a joy that is present in the midst of suffering or death. Stephen’s story is a perfect capstone to our week because it highlights the truly divine nature of joy.
Stephen’s death teaches us something else about joy. Christian joy and Christian faith are meant to be shared and given away, never held onto for ourselves alone. There is a maxim that the faith is not taught it is caught. It can be caught precisely because it is joyful, and joy is infectious. Every biblical character this week, once touched by joy, desired to share it. Our week began by reflecting on Francis’ call to recover the joy of the gospel, and St. Stephen reminds us today that this joy is a joy that ought to orient our evangelization.
The pandemic has made all of us cautious of infecting or being infected by something negative. We have taken steps to hold back, to withdraw, and to distance ourselves from others as a means of trying to be safe. As Christians, there can be a danger of evangelizing in the way that we live in a pandemic – from a distance, hiding what we have within, or with a fear that our faith is more like a virus than a cure. St. Stephen’s life and death reminds us that Christian joy is missionary because it is the good news of a cure for man’s perduring pandemic of sin. Let us pray that the Lord might give us Stephen’s joy rooted in Christ that we might infect others with Christ’s love.