A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. And remember, this is the feast of Saint Stephen, Stephen, the first martyr. Jesus said to his apostles, be on your guard with respect to others. They will hail you into court. They will flog you in their synagogues.
You will be brought to trial before rulers and kings to give witness before them and before the Gentiles, and all of this on my account. When they hand you over, do not worry about what you will say or how you will say it. When that hour comes, dreadful as it may be, you will be given what you are to say. For remember this, you yourselves will not be the speakers. The spirit of your father will be speaking in you.
Brother will hand over brother to death, and the father his own child. Children will turn against their own parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all on account of me. But whoever holds out until the end will escape death. And this is the gospel gospel of the lord.
Praise be to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. If you put together quietly in your own minds this first reading from the book of the acts, the second reading from the gospel, the good news of our lord according to Saint Matthew, and then remember that today is not even twenty four hours later than the great celebration that the Western world has had in the on the anniversary of the birthday of God as man. You put these three things together and you come up with something severe and solemn, extremely severe and solemn.
It's as if the church, and this is the voice of the living Christ speaking to us, is warning us of our vocation vocation as Christians. Not as our vocation of defying natural human beings, and that can be a lofty thing. Let us not forget it. There were noble and heroic men and women among pagans. There have been ignoble men and women among Christians.
There is nothing automatic in being actually a Christian by being called a Christian. Christian. And to be called a Christian is no mean thing. When we can go within less than twenty four hours, because in the literature of the church we have the first vespers or we used to have, the first vespers of Saint Stephen on Christmas day, the church is reminding us of what it means to be, in actuality, actuality, a Christian. She is telling us, look at what happened to the savior at the very day of his birth.
That was under severe poverty stricken circumstances. Unfortunate, but true that he did not have a place to lay his head. Then the church is saying, look, here's what happened to the first martyr. And that first martyr, it begins a long series of martyrs. And then as if to say this was no coincidence, this is the significant part, that after the first reading, which tells us about Saint Stephen, then we have our Lord telling us what he told his disciples, his chosen 12, his elite troops, that if they followed him, what they might expect.
And I repeat that these words were spoken to Jews and that speak to a Jew in solemn toes expecting him to believe you, and at the same time telling you that sons will rise up against parents, and parents will hand over their own children to be executed. That was simply abhorrent. We cannot really actually realize how abhorrent such a concept is, and yet Christ said it. In the second reading, the church is saying, look, here is what it means to follow Christ. How do I know he said so?
Now this is not to take the joy out of life, life, but it's it's certainly going to take out a lot of what the world considers joy. And it will be a joyless life unless something much better, infinitely better, comes into the picture, and that's the joy of Christ. He brought us not the peace of this world. He said, I do not bring it. He said that explicitly.
That's believing. The church is doing her best to make us believe, to make us realize what it is to be a Christian. It's no simple matter. In many ways, it's a severe thing. It's not a soft tranquilizing thing.
It's everything that's the opposite of all of that. Opposite. And the church is saying, this is what it is. I'm telling you so you'll know, so you'll be prepared. And the final word I want to leave with you is this, don't look inside of you for strength to be a Christian.
That is absurd. Don't ask yourself, could I have been a Stephen? Could I have been a Joan of Arc? Could I have been a Saint Thomas More? I couldn't be any of those things, and neither could any one of them have been one of them either without the grace of God.
Jesus said, without me, you can do nothing. But with his grace, we can do everything. But it's the plural pronoun we in association with Jesus Christ, our savior and our brother. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen.