The Feast of Stephen

What’s the day after Christmas called? Your calendar will tell you it is “Boxing Day”. But on the Church’s calendar, from ancient times, it has been called St Stephen's Day or the Feast of St Stephen.

The church's first known martyr, St Stephen was a deacon of the emerging church. In those times deacons looked after the poor.

According to the Acts of the Apostles, Stephen aroused the enmity of members of various synagogues by his teachings: "for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us". At his trial, he made a speech denouncing the Jewish authorities who were sitting in judgment on him and was then stoned to death. His martyrdom was witnessed by Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee and Roman citizen, no doubt a moment that would haunt St Paul (as he came to be) throughout his life.

In Stephen’s defence he argues that God cannot be tied to a particular place or building. He noted that Abraham was called unexpectedly out of Ur in Southern Mesopotamia (modern day Iracq) a city hundreds of miles outside of Palestine. With no guarantee of success Abraham trusted in God’s promise and, in obedience, bravely ventured into the unknown. Furthermore, God uses unexpected people: Jacob won his father’s blessing (his elder brother’s birth-right) by deceit; Joseph was envied, hated and exiled, but God chose them and was was with them. Moses heard the voice of God calling him to action and obeyed, but he was rejected and insulted by those with no vision and wanted only security.

The Christmas message of King George VI, broadcast in 1939, echoes this when he quoted the poem by Minnie Louise Haskins:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”
So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night.
And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.

It was also read at The Queen Mother’s funeral.

There is an echo of the poem in a familiar carol…



Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay 'round about
Deep and crisp and even

Wenceslas was a real person: the Duke of Bohemia, a 10th-century Christian prince in a land where many practiced a more ancient religion. In one version of his legend, Wenceslas was murdered in a plot by his brother, who was under the sway of their so-called pagan mother.

Following his death, Wenceslas became a saint and martyr revered especially for his kindness to the poor. One account tells how “rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God's churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched.”

Almost a thousand years after Wenceslas lived a 19th-century Englishman, John Mason Neale, wrote the now-famous English lyric to an ancient melody “"Tempus adest floridum"

Its most basic message is summed up in its final lines:

"Ye who now will bless the poor
shall yourselves find blessing."

It reminds us that Wenceslas, like Stephen was revered as caring for the poor. This Christmas let us think of those less fortunate than ourselves. What can we do to help them?