29 January 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” 2 Corinthians 4:10
On the Fridays of Denha the Church remembers those through whom Christ was made visible, and today it is Stephen, the first martyr. The first reading tells of another innocent man. Naboth will not sell his family vineyard to King Ahab: “The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.” Queen Jezebel arranges a religious fast, seats two scoundrels opposite Naboth to accuse him of cursing God and the king, and has him stoned outside the city. Then Elijah meets Ahab in the stolen vineyard with God's question: “Have you killed, and also taken possession?” In the Gospel Jesus laments over a city that repeats this story: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” He speaks of all the righteous blood shed on earth, “from the blood of righteous Abel” onward.
Stephen stands at the end of that line, but he does not die as a victim only. Filled with the Holy Spirit, “he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” As the stones fall he prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”, and kneeling, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” At his feet the witnesses lay their coats, beside a young man named Saul. Paul, once that young man, later describes the martyr's life from the inside: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” The stones were real, but so was the glory: “this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen.” In Denha Stephen shows us Christ: the face of a forgiving God, visible in a dying man.
Theme: “The life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
Innocent blood, the martyr's vision, and the glory hidden in affliction.
“But Naboth said to Ahab, “The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”” 1 Kings 21:3
“so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” Matthew 23:35
Apply: Stand up for someone treated unjustly by the powerful.
“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful ones.” Psalm 116:15
““Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”” Acts 7:56
Apply: Pray by name for someone who has wronged you.
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD rescues them from them all.” Psalm 34:19
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;” 2 Corinthians 4:8–9
Apply: Offer one affliction today, looking at what cannot be seen.
The martyrs show Christ's face in suffering.
Look at what cannot be seen, and forgive.
Take-home resolution: Pray each day this week for persecuted Christians.
Dear friends, Naboth refuses to sell his family vineyard to the king: the LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance (1 Kings 21:3). He is falsely accused and stoned. Jesus laments over Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to it, which he longed to gather as a hen gathers her brood (Matthew 23:37).
Stephen is the next in that line. But filled with the Holy Spirit he looks up and says: I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56). He dies praying: Lord, do not hold this sin against them.
Saul held the coats. Years later, as Paul, he writes: we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies (2 Corinthians 4:8, 10).
So let us look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. The stones are real, but the glory is greater. Let us carry Christ in our troubles and forgive as Stephen forgave. Amen.
Children, St Stephen looked up and saw Jesus in heaven, even when people hurt him. He forgave them! When someone hurts us, let us look to Jesus and pray for them.
Lord Jesus, standing at the right hand of God, you opened the heavens to your servant Stephen as he died forgiving his killers. Through his prayers, keep us from being crushed in affliction, let your life be made visible in our bodies, and give us the grace to say: Lord, do not hold this sin against them. Amen.
On this Friday of Denha the Church keeps the memory of St Stephen, the first martyr, and the four readings follow a single thread: the blood of the innocent and what God does with it. Naboth is stoned on false evidence so that a king can have a vineyard, and God sends Elijah to name the crime. Stephen is stoned after a hearing with false witnesses, but he sees the heavens opened and dies forgiving. Paul, who once stood by at that stoning, describes from the inside what it is to carry the death of Jesus so that his life may be seen. And Jesus, in Matthew, grieves over the long line of the murdered and longs to gather his people under his wings. The key words are witness, blood and glory. Denha means the dawning, the rising of Christ’s light, and today that light shines in a dying man’s face.
Setting.
Ahab ruled the northern kingdom of Israel in the ninth century BC, from his capital at Samaria, with a second palace at Jezreel in the fertile valley. His wife Jezebel was the daughter of the king of the Sidonians (16:31), and she brought with her the worship of Baal. The chapters around this one are the great contest between that court and the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 17–19).
The story turns on two ideas of land. For Israel the land belongs to God: “the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants” (Leviticus 25:23). Each family holds its portion as a trust from him, to pass on. The king therefore has no right to it. Jezebel’s question, “Do you now govern Israel?”, comes from another idea of kingship altogether, in which a king’s desire is law.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
““The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.”” (21:3)
Naboth’s whole speech in the story is this one sentence. He is a small man with one sentence, and it costs him his life.
“She wrote in the letters, “Proclaim a fast, and seat Naboth at the head of the assembly;” (21:9)
This is the cruelty of the plan: a religious fast, a seat of honour, the name of God. A fast suggested that some grave sin had to be put right. Religion itself is made the instrument of the crime.
“So they took him outside the city, and stoned him to death.” (21:13)
The elders know the Law: a blasphemer is stoned outside the camp (Leviticus 24:14). So Stephen will be dragged out of the city and stoned (Acts 7:58), and Jesus will suffer “outside the city gate” (Hebrews 13:12).
“Have you killed, and also taken possession?” (21:19)
The letters were written by Jezebel and carried out by others, and Ahab’s hands look clean. God addresses him all the same. A person is answerable for what he profits from and does not stop. The question echoes the first one God asked about a murder: “What have you done?” (Genesis 4:10).
“Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” He answered, “I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord,” (21:20)
Ahab offered to buy a vineyard, and in the end the one who has been sold is himself.
How the Church reads it.
St Ambrose wrote a whole treatise on this chapter, On Naboth, and says that the story is old in time but happens every day (in substance). St Paul VI quotes that treatise in Populorum Progressio 23: what you give the poor is not from what is yours, you are returning what is theirs. The Catechism teaches that the right to private property does not cancel the original gift of the earth to all humanity (CCC 2403), condemns the unjust taking of what belongs to others (CCC 2409), and names false witness as a grave offence against justice (CCC 2476). The blood of the innocent is among the sins that cry out to heaven (CCC 1867). Many Christian readers have also seen in Naboth a figure of the Innocent One, put to death on false testimony.
Setting.
Stephen was one of the seven chosen to serve the tables of the Greek-speaking widows in Jerusalem, “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” (6:5). The Church remembers them as the first deacons, though Acts does not yet use that title. His preaching brought him before the council, with false witnesses saying that he spoke against the Temple and the Law (6:11–14), and he answered with the long speech of chapter 7, retelling Israel’s story.
Acts tells us that the speech ended with a hard reproach (7:51–53), in the voice of the prophets. Stephen speaks as a Jew to fellow Jews. The men who killed him were a particular crowd in a particular hour, and Luke’s account has an uncertain legal shape: it reads more like an eruption of fury than a formal sentence.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” (7:55)
Stephen has just told how the God of glory appeared to Abraham (7:2) and how God does not live in houses made by hands (7:48). Now he sees that glory himself, with no temple around him, out in the open under a shower of stones.
“But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him.” (7:57)
Some will not hear, as Stephen has said (7:51). It is a warning for every believer, since any of us may be tempted to cover our ears to an uncomfortable truth.
“and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.” (7:58)
Deuteronomy 17:7 makes the witnesses throw the first stones, and they lay aside their coats for the work. Here is the first mention of the man who will be the Apostle Paul. He will later be stoned himself (2 Corinthians 11:25).
“While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”” (7:59)
Jesus prayed this prayer to the Father (Luke 23:46). Stephen prays it to Jesus. This early Christian is calling on Jesus as Lord, as one prays to God.
“Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.” (7:60)
Greek: “he fell asleep” (ekoimēthē), the Christian word for the death of the faithful. The POC keeps it (മരണനിദ്ര, the sleep of death). After such a death, the word is a word of peace.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism calls martyrdom “the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith” (CCC 2473), and teaches that the forgiveness of enemies is where Christian prayer reaches its height (CCC 2844). St Fulgentius of Ruspe, in a sermon on St Stephen, says that love was his weapon and that by his love he won Saul, his persecutor, to be his companion in heaven (in substance). A saying handed down under St Augustine’s name makes the same point: had Stephen not prayed, the Church would not have had Paul. St Gregory the Great explains the standing Christ: to sit belongs to a judge, to stand to one who fights or helps (in substance).
Setting.
Paul has just said, “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God” (4:7). Today’s reading unpacks that sentence. He has known real danger; earlier in the letter he speaks of an affliction in Asia so heavy that he despaired of life (1:8), and later he lists beatings, shipwreck and a stoning (11:23–27).
He is answering those who thought a true apostle should look impressive. His argument is the opposite: the weakness of the messenger is where the power of God can be seen, because the pattern of the Apostle’s life is the pattern of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;” (4:8)
These words could be said of Stephen. They are not a boast, for the power is God’s.
“always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (4:10)
“Made visible” is a word for Denha. The Risen Jesus is shown to the world in the bodies of those who suffer for him. Paul says simply “Jesus” again and again in these verses, the human name of the one who really died.
“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” (4:16)
This verse speaks to the sick and the old as much as to apostles.
“For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure,” (4:17)
Paul, who has listed his sufferings, calls them “slight”. He can do so only by placing them on the scale beside what is to come.
“because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” (4:18)
This is exactly what Stephen did (Acts 7:55).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism applies the image of the clay jars to the whole Christian life: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (CCC 1420). Because Christ has in some way united himself with every person, all are offered a share in the paschal mystery, and he calls his disciples to take up their cross (CCC 618). The sick, too, are united to his Passion by the grace of the Anointing (CCC 1521). The Church does not call suffering good in itself. She teaches that, joined to Christ, it can bear fruit.
Setting.
These are the last words of Jesus’ public teaching in Matthew, spoken in the Temple before he leaves it (24:1). The chapter is a series of woes addressed to “scribes and Pharisees”. Its language is the hard language of the prophets, who rebuked their own people out of love. It is also a family dispute. Jesus himself was a Jew, and he agreed with the Pharisees on many things (see 23:2–3; CCC 575–576). Many scholars think that Matthew’s sharpness also reflects the painful tension of his own day, when Christian Jews and synagogue leaders were separating.
Israel’s own Scriptures confess the rejection and killing of prophets (Nehemiah 9:26; 2 Chronicles 36:15–16). Jesus does not stand outside this history as an accuser. He places himself within it, as the last of the rejected messengers, and he weeps for the city.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town,” (23:34)
“I send”: Jesus speaks with the authority of God. Matthew’s readers would have recognised their own missionaries here (compare 10:17, 23), and Christians have long heard Stephen in this verse.
“from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.” (23:35)
Abel is the first murder in the Bible. The Zechariah killed in the Temple court (2 Chronicles 24:20–22) is probably meant as the last, because in its usual order the Hebrew Bible closes with Chronicles. There he is the son of Jehoiada; Zechariah son of Berechiah is the name of the prophet (Zechariah 1:1), and Matthew’s wording may join the two. The “you” is the language of prophetic accusation, addressed to that generation’s leaders. It is not a charge against the Jewish people as a whole.
““Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (23:37)
The doubled name is the sound of grief (compare “O my son Absalom”, 2 Samuel 18:33). “Stones those who are sent”: in Acts the next in line is Stephen.
“See, your house is left to you, desolate.” (23:38)
“Your house” is the Temple, and it may also mean the city and its people. The language echoes Jeremiah 22:5. The Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. Jesus speaks as one in sorrow, not with satisfaction.
“For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (23:39)
The last word is not doom. The verse quotes Psalm 118:26, the greeting of pilgrims, and it looks forward to a day of welcome.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism counts the blood of Abel among the sins that cry out to heaven (CCC 1867). It teaches firmly that the Passion cannot be charged against all Jews then living, nor against Jews today (CCC 597; Nostra Aetate 4), and that “the glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history” until he is recognised by all Israel (CCC 674, citing this verse with Romans 11). St Paul says that God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). St Augustine loved the image of the hen: no other bird is so plainly weakened by caring for her chicks, and so she pictures the Wisdom of God made weak for our sake (in substance).
If God sees everything, why did he let Naboth and Stephen die?
Scripture does not explain this in a sentence. It does show that God is not silent: he sends Elijah to the vineyard, and he opens the heavens for Stephen. The innocent are not forgotten, and their blood has a voice before him. The full answer the Christian has is the Cross and Resurrection, where God himself enters the suffering of the innocent. The Catechism says that faith gives no quick answer to evil, and that the whole of the Christian message is the response (CCC 309).
Does Matthew 23 or the death of Stephen mean that the Jewish people are to blame?
No. Jesus, Stephen, Paul and the first believers were Jews, and those who killed Stephen were one angry crowd in one place. The Church teaches that Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed, and that the guilt of those events cannot be laid on all Jews of that time, or on Jews today (Nostra Aetate 4; CCC 597–598). These passages call every believer to examine himself: where have I covered my ears?
Why is Stephen remembered in Denha, if the Latin calendar keeps him on 26 December?
The East Syriac tradition gives the Fridays of this season to those through whom Christ was made known. A martyr is a witness, and so he belongs to a season about the showing of Christ. The two calendars honour the same saint from different angles: the Latin one places the first martyr beside the Child born for us, and ours places him among the witnesses who made the Lord known.
In our tradition a martyr is a sahada, from the Syriac word for a witness, just as the Greek martys in Stephen’s story means a witness. To Syro-Malabar ears “Sahada” is an old and loved title. The Holy Qurbana stands where Stephen stood: he saw the heavens opened and Jesus at the right hand of God, and we pray before that same Lord. Those who suffer for Christ in many lands today are his brothers and sisters. We pray for them, and with Stephen we pray for those who wrong them. A family with a quarrel over land or an old wrong will find today’s readings close to home: Naboth’s story warns us about greed, and Stephen’s prayer shows the way out of revenge.