Protomartyr, Archdeacon Stephen

Archdeacon Stephen was the senior of the seven deacons chosen by the Twelve Apostles to serve the widows and poor of the Jerusalem church (Acts 6:1-6), full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He performed great wonders and signs among the people, provoking the envy of the Jewish scribes and elders, who could not withstand his wisdom. On a false charge of blasphemy against God and Moses, he was brought before the Sanhedrin, where he delivered a lengthy speech recounting the history of Israel and its rejection of the prophets and of Christ (Acts 7). During the trial, filled with the Holy Spirit, he looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, which he declared to his judges. The enraged crowd drove him outside the walls of Jerusalem and stoned him; a young man named Saul, guarding the cloaks of those who stoned him, witnessed the execution — he would later become the Apostle Paul. Stephen prayed for his killers with words like those of the crucified Christ: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." He became the first martyr for Christ, hence his title Protomartyr. His relics were found in 415 and translated from Jerusalem to Constantinople in 428. His main commemoration is kept on December 27/January 9 (the day of his martyrdom, the day after the Nativity of Christ); also August 2/15 (translation of relics) and September 15/28 (finding of relics), as well as January 4/17 in the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles.