Be On Your Guard

^{Matthew 10: 17-22} 

^{Endure to the End}

¹⁷ Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. ¹⁸ On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. ¹⁹ But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, ²⁰ for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

²¹ “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. ²² You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

 It always seems strange to leap from the joy and "magic" of the nativity scene at Bethlehem with the Christ Child surrounded by shepherds, animals, angels singing in the sky, and a huge star illuminating the scene, a picture that remains fixed in our imagination, to the martyrdom of St. Stephen, which we celebrate the very next day.  The Acts of the Apostles (Acts 7) recounts his death in great detail, including his  final words as well as his fatal stoning, and sets the stage for a drama that will be repeated endlessly even to the present day:  people giving their lives for this Child; no ordinary child but the Son of God who became a man precisely to die that we might be set free from our sins. The irony is that the Nativity, with all its coziness made possible the brutal slaying of this Child as a man, the God-man, who rose from the dead and reversed the pattern of death to LIFE.

As we remember St. Stephen today, we also reminds ourselves that the death-to-life theme is also working in our lives, as we die to ourselves daily in order to rise with Christ to enjoy the best part of the life for which we were created.

Bro. Rene