Our Lady and St Stephen, the first martyr
St Stephen's feast comes immediately after Christmas, showing us that Christ’s Nativity was always ordered towards the Cross. But what did Our Lady make of this first martyrdom?
St Stephen's feast comes immediately after that of Christmas, showing us that Christ’s Nativity was always ordered towards the Cross. But what did Our Lady make of this first martyrdom?
In this passage, Fr Coleridge tells us:
How Our Lady understood the martyrdom of St Stephen as a profound act of Divine Providence, reflecting the sacrificial love of Christ Himself.
Why she recognised the shedding of blood for the faith as a precious and efficacious gift, integral to the growth of the Church and the salvation of souls.
What she might have understood of the future role of martyrs in the Church’s history, even without full revelation of all its details.
The fact that the Protomartyr’s feast comes immediately after that of Christmas shows that Christ’s Nativity was ordered directly towards his redemptive Passion. In its own turn, St Stephen’s martyrdom marked the beginning of the Church’s glorious resistance unto blood, a participation in the redemptive power of Christ's sacrifice.
But what did Our Lady make of it all? Did she have some prior knowledge of St Stephen’s martyrdom? How did she relate to the man who would be the first to die for her Son’s name?
Father Coleridge explains in the following piece:
The First Martyrdom—St Stephen the Deacon
From
Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, Ch. VIII, pp 121-140
Office and graces of the Seven
Something has already been said of the eminent distinction of the seven men selected for the work of presiding over the daily distributions, in which, as was alleged, some negligences had occurred, which were so promptly provided against by this new measure of the Apostles.
Their ordination as deacons, of which St. Luke speaks in this place, was an elevation, as we have said, in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and was not directly connected with the office which the seven had to discharge in the care of the alms of the Church. It gave them a large increase of grace, beside the sacramental grace which belonged to the Order to which they were raised.
The custom of committing the treasury of the Church and the care of the poor to deacons was long continued in various parts of the world. In the present case, we hear no more of the “daily distributions,” but we soon find that two at least of the seven thus promoted became very conspicuous for their activity and success in preaching the Gospel.
The circumstances of their election, which made it a point of exquisite prudence that the persons thus chosen should be taken from that portion of the flock from which the complaints had proceeded, had an incidental effect in preparing that step of enormous importance which was as yet held back, the admission of the Gentiles to the Church.
Six of the seven were presumably Jews not of Palestine. St. Stephen himself is said to have come from Rome. The seventh, Nicolas, was actually a Gentile by birth. He was “a proselyte of Antioch.” The term proselyte must here mean one who had become a Jew in the strictest sense in which it was possible, submitting to circumcision and becoming a keeper of the whole Law.
Still, his Gentile origin is a fact of great significance, especially when taken in conjunction with the “Grecian” origin of all the others. No one could object to him as a proselyte, but still the fact of his birth made his promotion a step beyond that of the other six.
We here catch a fresh glimpse of that stupendous revolution, which was being silently prepared by God, in the rejection of the Jews and the admission of the Gentiles. Before we reach the full development of this wonderful counsel of God, we have many stages in the Sacred History to traverse.
But when we know what the issue was that was being prepared, those preliminary steps stand out in a fuller and clearer light.
Conversions among the Priests
For a time, the seven become prominent in the history, as the Apostles were occupying themselves more exclusively in government, preaching, and prayer.
“And the Word of God increased and the number of the disciples was multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly: a great multitude of the priests also obeyed the faith.”
We see in the later chapters of the Acts, as well as in St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, how tenaciously even the Christians of Jerusalem clung to the Temple worship. It is therefore a note of great significance that we are informed of the conversion of numbers among the priests, which must also have had a great effect on the people.
Moreover, the attitude of the Pharisees, as led by Gamaliel, could not have been without its effect. At the same time, the attempt to put down the Church by persecution was for the time abandoned. There was little opposition to the teaching of the Apostles, and the effect of their miracles must have been as great as ever. The history now attaches itself to the person of St. Stephen.
“And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, did great wonders and miracles among the people. Now there arose some of that which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of them that were of Cilicia and Asia, disputing with Stephen. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit that spoke.”1
Activity of mind among the Jews of the dispersion
Here again it is a point worthy of notice that we find the controversy chiefly active among the Jews, not of Palestine, but of the dispersion.
This is only natural. The Jews of Palestine lived in quiet observance of the Law and the traditions, and the questions which arose among them would be such as were called into existence by the disputes among their chief Rabbis, or the schools of Hillel and Schammai, and the like.
The greater questions as to God’s dealings with the world at large, the prerogatives of faith, the universality of redemption, and the like, of which we hear so much in St. Paul’s Epistles, were in a great measure outside their range of thought.
The Jews from abroad were trained in a different atmosphere. They lived among the inquisitive Greeks, who left no question unasked, no doctrine unexamined.
They were in the midst of active political life and of restless philosophical speculation. They had to give an answer for their faith in Alexandria, in the universities of the Greek world, of which Tarsus, St. Paul’s birthplace, was one, and to active minds in all the cities in which they dwelt—men who might affect to despise them and think them enemies of humanity, but who could not help being attracted by the simplicity and purity of their lives and the sublimity of their religion, by the side of which, even judged intellectually, polytheism was absurd and monstrous and philosophy a failure.
It is not wonderful that Stephen and others like him should be ready to dispute on the doctrines of the Gospel with strangers to Judea like themselves, any more than it is a matter of surprise that as soon as the struggle between the Church and the Synagogue was transferred to the field of discussion and argument, we should find that the chief actors in the conflict belong to that class of the Jews who had been born and brought up outside the peaceful atmosphere of the Holy Land.
This again is a part of the preparation by which the great change of the opening of the Church to the Gentiles was ushered in.
Various synagogues in Jerusalem
Jerusalem resembled modern Rome in one respect, that there were within its walls a great number of synagogues frequented by Jews of particular birth and nationality. As in Rome almost every nation has its Church, so in Jerusalem the Jews from different parts had their own synagogues. St. Luke tells us that the controversy of which he is speaking was carried on against St. Stephen by members of various synagogues which he enumerates.
They are the synagogues of the Libertines, the Cyrenians, the Alexandrians, and the Cilicians and Asians—that is, of the province of Asia. All these except the first must have had in their members men brought up in the centres of Greek cultivation and philosophy.
The Libertines appear to have been “strangers of Rome,” as St. Luke speaks in his account of the Day of Pentecost. Pompey had carried a large number of Jews to Rome, where they were sold as slaves, and the children of these, when they had risen by their industry and usefulness to their masters, may easily have obtained their freedom and founded a community at Rome which, by other aggregations, became very numerous, and their synagogue might have been called “of the Libertines.”
Those who think that St. Stephen may have come from Rome will see a kind of confirmation for their hypothesis in the fact that the first-named among his opponents are from this synagogue.
Controversy with St Stephen
“And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit that spoke. Then they suborned men to say they had heard him speak words of blasphemy against Moses and against God.”
We are obliged to gather the subject-matter of the controversy waged between St. Stephen and his adversaries from the charges which are brought against him, however much of falsehood may have been mixed up in them. But we can hardly be wrong in thinking that the question of the strict obligation of the Law, and the like, must have been raised, all the more as the Jews engaged in the dispute were brought up in the midst of Gentiles, and must thus have had such questions more or less familiarly before them.
Nor is it at all inconsistent with experience, that such Jews should have been even more zealous for the strict observance of the Law and the traditions than others living ordinarily in the Holy Land. These observances were to them the characteristic badges of the children of the Covenant, as distinguished from the far larger populations around them, and in such cases the affections and even the intelligence are often inclined to exaggerate the claims of what is in themselves so distinctive.
St. Stephen in his preaching and arguments had the promise of our Lord to rely upon, which St. Luke seems here to refer to, when he says that his adversaries could not resist the wisdom and spirit which spoke.
“I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist or gainsay.”2
And the speech which follows, in which St. Stephen pleaded before the Sanhedrin, is a marvellous instance of the guidance of thought and language which was especially to be vouchsafed when they pleaded before tribunals.3
Resemblance to the Passion
We notice in the manner in which the death of St. Stephen was brought about many features which make it a kind of repetition of the Passion of our Lord.
There are the false witnesses suborned to misrepresent what he may have actually said, giving it just the turn which was required in order to prejudice against him those who were to sit in judgment. There is the collection, as it appears, of the Sanhedrin, or at least of some large and authoritative assembly, under the presidency of the High Priest. There is even a reminiscence of the charge made against our Lord about destroying the Temple.
“This man ceaseth not to speak words against this holy place and the Law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and change the traditions which Moses hath delivered to us.”
The conjecture that St. Stephen was one of the Jews of the dispersion, who might have settled in Jerusalem for a time, does not rest on any quite certain foundation.
But it is in harmony with the fact of his selection for the office with regard to which his name first meets us, and it is possible that such Jews, if many of them were more bigoted about the Temple and its services than the natives of Palestine themselves, may also have numbered among them many who took a larger and less national view as to the designs of God and as to the temporary character of the Mosaic dispensation.
Zeal of the foreign Jews for the Temple
Such men would come to Jerusalem full of zeal for the conversion of those whom they knew so well, among whom they had lived, and whom, in so many cases, they knew to be very virtuous and devout.
There must have been scores of men among these Gentiles like the centurion at Capharnaum and his brother officer Cornelius at Cæsarea, and their Jewish friends might naturally ask whether the Christian covenant was to require of them to become strict proselytes to Judaism as a condition of admission to the Church.
Our Lord Himself, though He was sent, as He said, only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, was continually speaking in not obscure terms of the admission of the Gentiles to His Kingdom. He said to the Samaritan woman that though salvation was of the Jews, the time was to come and indeed had come when the true worshippers of the Father were to worship Him neither in the mountain of Gerizim nor in Jerusalem, that is in neither place nor in any place exclusively.
We are not told how far the doctrine contained in these words had by this time become a matter of discussion among the disciples and with their controversial adversaries, but probably the charge against St. Stephen may have been grounded in some measure on such a foundation. This hypothesis is quite in keeping with the facts before us.
St Stephen’s face “as of an Angel”
The question of the High Priest to St. Stephen, asking him whether the charge was true, may remind us of the discomfiture of Caiphas when our Lord would not give any answer to the charges of the false witnesses. Before that, however, we find an incident mentioned in the case of the holy martyr which does not occur in the history of the Passion.
After the charge had been made against St. Stephen, the Sacred Text tells us that “all that sat in the Council looking upon him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.” It is clear that St. Luke must mean us to understand that there was something preternatural about the appearance of the face of St. Stephen, as might have been the case if he had been favoured with some heavenly vision, such as we know him to have been allowed at the close of his discourse.
We shall see presently the commentary that is made on this fact by the contemplative whose work we have so often used. But in any case, the heavenly vision which may have been vouchsafed to St. Stephen on this occasion, before he began his defence of himself to the Council, may be of use to us as reminding us of the ecstatic rapture in which his soul must have been entranced at the moment when that defence was to be made.
Our Lord had forbidden the Apostles and others with commissions like theirs, to premeditate as to what they should say, when they were taken before rulers and tribunals.
The defence of the martyrs
For it seems that it was often to be His will that on such occasions they were to have words put into their mouths which they would not have had the courage to utter as the results of their own preparation.
The defences of the martyrs were to be utterances of the Holy Ghost, in the same way, to some extent, as the words of the prophets, who were to speak what God desired to be uttered at the time, without exclusive reference to the feelings or thoughts of the prophets themselves.
It is very natural indeed to think, that God might use those on whom He was about to bestow the crown of martyrdom for the utterance of strong and severe denunciations which He would not put into the mouths of others whose preaching was to last longer. We have therefore every reason for considering this discourse of the first of the Christian martyrs as having been especially guided by the Holy Ghost throughout its whole course, though it appears at first sight to end somewhat abruptly and without the full complete exhaustion of the subject-matter.
For St. Stephen does not say a word in answer to the direct charge made against him, except so far as such answer may be supposed to be included in the historical summary of the dealings of God with the people, and of their ingratitude to Him.
Condemnation of the Jews
It would be out of place in our present work to go through the speech of St. Stephen word by word, or sentence by sentence. It is enough to enable ourselves to catch the main drift and purpose of the discourse. It reads like a solemn upbraiding of the nation for their continual infidelities and ingratitude towards God.
It ends by a repetition of the note which had already been sounded, almost uniformly, in all the discourses of the Apostles at this time, the note of reproach for the supreme guilt of the murder of our Lord. We find this in the discourse of St. Peter on the Day of Pentecost, and again in the speech of the same Apostle on the occasion of the first miracle.
He repeats it immediately after, when he is placed with St. John before the authorities, after the miracle, and again when, with the whole Apostolic body, he was taken before the Council at the time when Gamaliel interfered and saved the Chief Priests from taking summary measures against the Church.
It is as if the Apostles had been guided in their public utterances to keep always before the people and their rulers that they had filled up, and were still more to fill up, the measure of their fathers, as our Lord had said to them, so that the judgment which was to be exacted of them for all the righteous blood shed from the beginning of the world might fall upon them immediately.
Sketch of St Stephen’s speech
Thus we may take this defence, as it seems at first sight, of the martyr, as also a sentence of condemnation of the Synagogue and of the Jewish nation, represented by its most learned and authoritative officials.
St. Stephen puts in their right place and relation the two institutions which he was accused of speaking against, that is, the Temple and the Law. He goes back, as St. Paul after him went back, to the original covenant of God with Abraham, centuries before the time of Moses.
He shows all through that there has been a continual spirit of rebellion on the part of the people against those whom God sent to them as leaders and deliverers, a spirit which was first exemplified in the treatment of Joseph at the hands of his brethren, and afterwards, more signally still, in the rejection of Moses when he wished to undertake the office of a saviour, and again when he was in the holy mountain of Sina to receive the Law from God.
He speaks of the tendency of the people to relapse again and again into idolatry, for which God punished them in the desert, and afterwards by the Babylonian Captivity.
This leads him on to the great outburst of indignant denunciation which closes the speech, in which he declares that the people always resisted the Holy Ghost, and that those now before him had treated our Lord, when He came in person, in the same manner in which their fathers treated the prophets, not one of whom has escaped persecution at their hands.
This language reminds us of the words of our Lord to the Council after He had been condemned, and also of those which He spoke to the women of Jerusalem who were bewailing His sentence as He passed up the Via Dolorosa.
But if the speech of St. Stephen was so full of zeal and indignation against the people who were represented by the Council before whom he spoke, we are not left without proofs of the tender and burning charity of the holy martyr towards those whom he was thus commissioned to denounce.
He had to speak to them in the name of God, as about to lay down his life as a martyr, and he had also to imitate the sublime charity of his Master on the Cross. At the same time, he bore solemn and public witness to the truth of our Lord’s Divine Person and Majesty.
“But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to Heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”
This was the special confession of the truth in which his martyrdom consisted.
“And he said, Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.”
It has often been remarked that this is the only instance in the New Testament in which our Lord is spoken of as the Son of Man by anyone but Himself. But it must be remembered that this was precisely the point of the martyr’s confession, that our Lord in His Human Nature was raised to the throne of glory at the right hand of God.
“And they, crying out with a loud voice, stopped their ears, and with one accord ran violently upon him, and casting him forth without the city, they stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at the feet of a young man whose name was Saul.
῾And they stoned Stephen, invoking and saying, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. And falling on his knees, he cried with a loud voice, saying, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep in the Lord. And Saul was consenting unto his death.”4
His martyrdom ‘typical’
The martyrdom of St. Stephen appears to have its place in the Sacred History, not only on its own account but also as representing and typifying the importance and efficacy of the whole glorious series of the martyrdoms which were to follow it until the end of the career of the Church upon earth.
It sets before us, in the first place, the characteristic use made by the enemies of the truth, of the established tribunals, sometimes civil, sometimes ecclesiastical, before which the martyrs were brought, that their condemnations and sacred deaths might appear to be carried out by the authority of law, which had for its foundation the ordinance of God Himself.
It represents the element of false accusation and subornation of witnesses which is also so very usual in such cases, and which is repeated constantly in the persecution of calumny which is ever going on against the Church, and which marks her controversial antagonists as the servants of the father of lies.
It represents to us the heroic boldness and calm of the martyrs, a boldness and a calm evidently not the fruit of any strength of their own, and which have often of themselves been enough to bring about the conversion of well-disposed bystanders, and even of the judges themselves.
It represents the extreme and divine charity which has also been so striking a feature in those who have thus witnessed to our Lord, their patience and serenity, sometimes even their intense and overflowing joy in the midst of what appeared to be torture beyond human endurance.
It represents in particular the charity of the martyrs to their persecutors and enemies, which has so often had for its fruit the conversion of those very enemies into children of the faith of the martyrs and even followers of their heroic labours for the truth for which they have suffered.
Presence of Saul
This may be the reason why St. Luke is so careful to inform us of the presence of St. Paul at the martyrdom of St. Stephen, which he makes the prelude and introduction, first indeed to the account of the fiery zeal of Saul for the extinction of the faith, and then of his glorious conversion and most fruitful labours for the Gospel while St. Stephen preached, and for which he suffered.
All this has to be considered in our estimate of the importance of this narrative of the martyrdom of St. Stephen in the Sacred History before us. It was fitting, as we may think, that as martyrdoms were to be instruments of such immense value in the history of the Church, both for the sanctification and glorification of the saints, and for the advance and purification of the Church, there should be something of this kind at the very outset of her history.
As there was to be a perfect instance of the miraculous evidences of her Mission, and of so many other features which were to be found in her story during a long succession of generations, so it was to be with the great feature of martyrdom.
It was also in harmony with the general laws of the Kingdom of God, that in each case these instances of such features which occur at the very outset of her course in the world, should be splendid and noble in their kind, and especially, as we shall see, splendid and noble in the fruits which they produced.
Our Lady’s intelligence
It is very natural that Christian contemplation should find a delight in considering the affections and thoughts which this new feature in the general history of the Church may have called forth in the tender and watchful heart of the Blessed Mother.
As in the other features which have already occurred in the narrative on which we are commenting, our Blessed Lady would see in this the great and magnificent design of God, apart from any hindrance that might be expected to mar the full efficiency of the Divine counsel, in consequence of the poorness of the correspondence of men to the graces so profusely lavished on them.
Thus, in the beautiful institution of the common life and the poverty practised in the early Church in Jerusalem, she would see the gift of God in all its fulness and fruitfulness, rather than in any actual prophetic prevision of the scanty extent to which the institution was to be used in the ages to come.
In the gift of miracles, considered as evidences of the kingdom and the grounds of faith in the word of the appointed preachers of the Church, she would understand what was meant by God to come from this boon, rather than what might possibly be on account of the hardness of the hearts of men.
She had indeed the experience of our Lord’s own Life and Ministry to enlighten her as to the possible failures of the Divine plan, but she could still regard it as in the intention of God, and her heart would glow with immense gratitude in considering the ineffable love with which that beautiful provision had been made.
The same thought applies with still greater force to her considerations of the gifts of grace, the means of sanctification, and the rest, of which she witnessed the first public introduction on the day of Pentecost, and afterwards. So it may have been with the careful provision made by the Apostles for the preservation of the most perfect unity and charity among the faithful under their care, which led to the appointment of the seven Deacons of whom St. Stephen was the chief.
And again, in the same way, our Blessed Lady would understand, in a measure of her own, the ineffable mercy shown in the continual progress of the Gospel preaching, and the blessings to the Church and to themselves involved in the sufferings of the Apostles at the hands of the Jewish authorities.
She could read the loving Providence of God in all these things with a discernment clearer than that with which the angels gazed on its workings from Heaven. She could praise and thank Him with a deeper and more intense gratitude, like that of the Sacred Heart of our Lord Himself.
Value of suffering
If this was the case with the other great features of the history and of the providential dispositions of its incidents of which we have had to speak, it would be pre-eminently so with this last feature of martyrdom.
It might have been guessed indeed by the angels that, as the salvation of mankind had been brought about by the suffering of the most painful and shameful death on the part of the Redeemer Himself, so also sufferings of the same kind on the part of His servants and ministers would play a very large part in the propagation and increase of His Kingdom.
Moreover, our Lord had spoken many words in the course of His Ministry which might well seem to be prophecies of great sufferings even unto death on the part of His chosen witnesses.
It is natural to think that our Blessed Lady treasured up these hints, and had a peculiar insight into the value of deaths incurred for the sake of our Lord and of His Gospel, which would be so many repetitions of His own Sacrifice, of their immense power in the increase and consolidation of the Kingdom, of the special glory which was to await those who showed their faithfulness even to this highest stage, as well as of the fury to which their enemies would be excited against them when they were sent forth as lambs among wolves.
The Apostles had gone forth from the presence of the Council rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of our Lord, when they had been scourged, and no doubt their joy was reflected in the heart of their Mother and Queen.
But now had begun the still greater and more honourable and fruitful kind of suffering, on which the Church was in so many countries and parts of the world to be perpetually built up, generation after generation.
Fruitfulness of persecution
The leader of the white-robed army of the martyrs had laid down his life, imitating our Lord, at the very moment of his death, in his prayer for his murderers as well as in his resignation of his soul into the hands of God.
The Church had now at length begun to resist unto blood. It was a point in her history not less momentous than the first miracle, or the beginning of the Apostolical preaching. It might spread consternation and fear among the faithful generally, who might have hoped that the comparative gentleness with which their enemies had as yet treated them might still be continued.
But that protection of Providence, which had seemed to shield the Apostles and their disciples from the worst kinds of violence, seemed now to be withdrawn. The storm of persecution had now burst in all its fury, and the Church was to meet it, not by resistance, or by the sheltering protection of any Divine interposition, but by suffering unto death.
Our Lady would understand it as it was in the intention of God, a more precious gift than if legions of angels had been sent in defence of the faithful, a greater help to the advancement of her cause than the neutrality of Gamaliel or the paralyzing of the animosity of Caiphas.
Our Lady’s anticipation
It may not have been among the gifts imparted permanently to this Blessed Mother, that she should have had stretched out before her the history of the succeeding ages of the Church in full clearness of detail.
In this manner she might not have had revealed to her all the great part which was to be allotted to the martyrs in the early centuries in the work of the foundation and consolidation of the Kingdom of our Lord.
She need not have traced all the circumstances under which the Apostles were to bear witness unto death, or the long line of martyrs who were to succeed St. Peter in the See of Rome, or how the most conspicuous Bishops all over the world, and many of the great apologists and writers in those ages, were to add to their other glories the crown of the martyr.
She need not have foreseen in detail how the first preachers in so many countries became also the protomartyrs and then the patrons of the places which they evangelized, nor the triumphs of those unknown millions all over the earth whose blood was shed so freely for our Lord to become everywhere the seed of His children.
But she could know the high place in the designs of God and in the arrangements of His Kingdom which was allotted to the shedding of blood. She had stood by the Cross and seen the Redemption of the world wrought out by the shedding of the Precious Blood of her Son.
Great office of the martyrs
She knew His words, that no man hath greater love than this, to give His Life for His friends, and she could see that, as the witness to the faith was what He required of His children, this witness could not be rendered in any way more perfect in love, more convincing in its testifying power, or more efficacious as an offering for the salvation of souls, than when it was rendered readily and joyously at the cost of life and all that is dear here below.
So Mary could understand, even if the future were not specially revealed to her, that the first ages of faith generated by the Word of God as preached by the Apostles, would also be ages when that faith so generated would be witnessed to in the face of Heaven and earth by the shedding of the blood of multitudes, and that in this sense the martyrs were to be sharers in the great work of the Apostles themselves.
Our Lady and St Stephen
Some of the contemplatives consider that as our Lady had taken the new Apostle, St. Mathias, to her heart with a special predilection, so also she had watched with a peculiar care and tenderness over the heroic youth, St. Stephen.
It would not be anything beyond the ordinary features of the lives of great saints, if our Lady had had some special foresight allowed to her as to the shortness of his career and the special distinction which was decreed for him as the leader of the army of the Christian martyrs. If she had any such prevision, it would naturally make her regard him with an especial love, and assist him in every way possible to her by her prayers and counsel.
A heart such as his would be drawn irresistibly to devotion to the Mother of our Lord, Whom he loved so ardently, and thus Mary would have increased opportunities of helping him in various ways.
Maria de Agreda tells us that he most earnestly desired to see her once more before his death, and that the brightness in his face, of which St. Luke tells us, was occasioned by a vision in which she appeared to him at the moment and blessed him at the beginning of his trial.
It may be that he had never seen our Lord, and that he had been prepared for his dying vision of the Son of Man in Heaven by familiar intercourse with her who resembled her Son in feature as well as in character.
We cannot doubt that she was assisting him in spirit, while his defence was being made, and when the time came for him to imitate his Lord, as has been said, so closely by his prayer for his persecutors and murderers.
From Fr Henry James Coleridge, Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age
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Acts vi. 8-10.
St. Luke xxi. 15.
Acts vii.
Acts vii. 55–59.