December 26, 2024 // Feast of Saint Stephen, first martyr

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s Gospel: Matthew 10:17-22

Reflect on the Word//

One of our family’s most beloved Christmas traditions is the at-home Nativity play we put on after Christmas dinner. The script is from Luke 2:1-20 and Matthew 2:1-12. The costumes are dad’s t-shirts; the props are household items. The actors are members of the family plus our unsuspecting dinner guests.

It’s been a source of great family memories over the years: of toddler innkeepers enthusiastically bellowing “NO ROOM,” of the various interpretations of the facial expressions required to convey that Herod was “troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matthew 2:3), and exactly how exceedingly we’re talking when the kings “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10).

No memorization is required. I hand the adults a script to read from, and for the younger kids, I just feed them their lines as they need them. No preparation needed. We all know just what to say. 

Just like Saint Stephen. 

For today, the second day of Christmas, is  the feast of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. And we are reminded by Saint Stephen’s Day just what our faith requires of us—God gave His whole self to us, and we are to give ourselves entirely to Him. In the Gospel today, Jesus reminds His disciples—and us—that our faith requires our witness, but we are never going it alone. “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say” (Matthew 10:19). We can trust the Holy Spirit to speak through us, to say what hearts need to hear. And while they may hate us for it, the God Who became a little Baby is worth it all.

Whether the Holy Spirit is inspiring our last words before martyrdom, or just giving us that little nudge to invite a friend to Mass (or over for dinner and a Nativity play), when we are docile to where the Holy Spirit is leading us, memorable things are sure to happen.