[In the Byzantine Church today is the feast day for St. Stephen while in the Latin Church December 26 is the day on which Stephen is liturgically commemorated.]
On December 27, the Church remembers the martyrdom of the Holy Apostle, the first Deacon, and the first Martyr, Stephen. The Ambon Prayer for this feast begins, “O Christ our God, you accepted the weakness of our flesh and strengthened it against the spiritual enemy. By your life-giving death you gave it courage against death. Because of this your holy martyrs preferred to die for you rather than to live. You revealed the man named Stephen as the founder of the assembly of martyrs.”
St. Stephen was the first martyr (witness) to our Lord because he was Christ-like himself. Jesus said that he came “not to be served, but to serve,” and so Stephen became a servant (diakonos). When he was tried for his faith, the Acts of the Apostles (6:15) says, “All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” He was deified and made God-like through his faith. As they became to stone him, he had a vision of the coming of Christ, “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. (7:55),” and like Christ on the Cross, he forgave his persecutors, “‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’; and when he said this, he fell asleep. (7:60)” Indeed, one of his persecutors, a man name Saul, would become one of the greatest apostles (8:1). How do Christians do that? How can they forgive people who hate them and take their lives? This cannot be done by human powers, but only by the grace of God. We can fulfill the meaning of Christmas, of a God who humbled himself for our sake, only by the power and love of God, only if we open our hearts to him entirely and submit to his will.
In virtually every rite of Christianity, the feast of St. Stephen’s martyrdom is immediately connected with Christmas. The faith and sacrifice of Stephen is the only proper response to the birth of the Son and Word of God as our Savior and Redeemer. In fact the feast of Christmas is surrounded by commemorations of martyrs:
The Feast of the Prophet Daniel and the Three Holy Children [in the fiery furnace] has always been closely connected with Christmas. Proper for them are found on the two Sunday before Christmas and today we sing, “Come, O faithful, let us celebrate the forefeast of the birth of Christ; offering a spiritual canticle by way of a star. Let us join the Magi and shepherds in their hymns of praise: Behold, the Savior has come from a virgin’s womb to call back to himself the whole human race.”
The prophet Haggai, in 520 B.C., preached that the temple must be rebuilt for the sake of the faith of the people. In this way he foreshadowed that Jesus, the Messiah to come, would be the Temple of the New Covenant in his body. His birth, then, is the completion of God’s promise to make his dwelling among his people.
St. Spiridon is commemorated with special solemnity in the Greek Church. The Synaxarion tells us, that “he led the peaceful life of a simple shepherd. He was a plain, unpolished countryman and yet without equal when it came to love of neighbor, meekness, acts of kindness, almsgiving and the practice of virtues.” He was a man of hospitality, who would break his ascetic fast to feed a stranger in need. He was a man of simple and plain words, who put to shame the vain eloquence of a prelate “who wanted to show off by altering certain words of the Gospel too common for his taste.” He was a perfect example of a saint, for through him the love of Christ manifested itself, raising the dead, stopping droughts, looking into the hearts of sinners and forgiving them. Because of his Christ-like virtues, he was called from being a shepherd of sheep in the field, to being the bishop pastor of Christ’s rational sheep in Tremithus. In this way, he was the fulfillment of the shepherds who came to Christ at his birth.
One can easily say that the greatest saint of the Byzantine Church is Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. Yet the only thing we know of him for certain is his name, and that a holy man named Nicholas was the bishop in Myra in the fourth century. He has become essentially connected with the feast of Christmas. While the details of his life are certainly legendary, the first appearance is the Vita per Michaelem, in the ninth century, and then by Simeon Metaphrastes in the tenth century, yet we cannot help but suspect that there is a tradition of the goodness of his character that prompted such stories. He is the a golden example of all that is good in a true Christian, following the Lord in love for the poor, in joy of salvation, and in greatness of heart. Where, then, the stories written to fit his character. Certainly, the human race is hungry for such a saint, explaining his embrace by Greece and Russia as their patron saint. He gave a dowry to the poor girls, he saved sailors from storms, he obtained the liberation of those falsely accused. When his body was taken from Myra to Bari, the goodness of his life made him a favored saint throughout all the West.
There is little doubt that the legendary story of the Holy Martyr Barbara was embellished a bit by early hagiographers. There is no reason for this, since the mere fact that someone who comes to faith in Christ is willing to lay down their life for him. For this reason, the more plausible facts of her life are a beacon for us who struggle in and for the faith. Her story tells us that she was a philosopher, a “lover of wisdom.” It was her love of wisdom, guided by grace that brought her to faith in the one true God in the Holy Trinity. It is a reminder that our faith is not blind, it is rational, based on an authentic consideration of reality. Clement of Alexandria was one of the first Christians to see the value of Greek philosophy for the Christian faith, and on this same day, December 4, we celebrate the memory of Our Holy Father John Damascene, who wrote a massive work, the Fount of Wisdom, reasoning about our faith.
Ivan Sleziuk is one of the Ukrainian martyrs from the Soviet era persecution of the Church. He was born January 14, 1896, ordained priest in 1923 and ordained bishop in April 1945. Arrested in June 1945 and sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp and then after a release was arrested a second time and sent to a prison camp for another 5 years being released in 1968. Bishop Ivan died on December 2, 1973.
Habakkuk prophesied in Judah during the last half of the 7th century BC. He was one of the temple prophets — that is, his oracles were composed to be sung in temple worship; thus, they took the form of lamentations and canticles. Their liturgical character has persisted in out monastic office where the third chapter of his book is used as the fourth canticle of the traditional matins canon.
Today is the 75th anniversary of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky (+Nov. 1, 1944).
Today, the Church commemorates, “The holy priest-martyr Theodore Romzha. Born in Veliky Bychkiv in Carpatho-Russia in 1911, he came from a poor family and exhibited a vocation to the priesthood. Sent to Rome for studies, he was ordained in 1937 and sent to the country parish of Berzovo. In 1939, he was called to the seminary at Uzhhorod and taught there until 1944. In 1944, despite his youth, he was ordained bishop for the Mukachevo Eparchy. During the Soviet Army’s occupation of Carpatho-Russia, he was tireless in his care for his flock and in his defense of the rights of the Byzantine Catholic Church.