The Catholic Accent Podcast

14 - Stephen gets stoned: The First Martyr of the Church

• Diocese of Greensburg • Season 2 • Episode 4

Share episode

Stones flew, but the loudest sound was mercy. We unpack Stephen’s fierce clarity before the Sanhedrin, his sweeping retelling of salvation history, and the charge of being “stiff‑necked” that still lands today. As a deacon formed in daily service, Stephen learned to die to himself long before he faced a hail of stones, which is why he could answer violence with forgiveness and truth with tenderness. That union of conviction and charity—rooted in the Eucharist—turns a courtroom into a pulpit and a martyrdom into seed for the Church.

We walk through who Stephen was, why the apostles chose deacons, and how the early Church balanced preaching with practical charity. Then we press into the heart: what does it mean to have an uncircumcised heart and ears, and how do we move from outward signs to interior conversion? Along the way, we read the symbols—stones that cry out, a loaf of bread atop a martyr’s burden—and connect them to Jesus’ mercy toward the woman caught in adultery and his own words from the cross that Stephen echoes with his last breath.

Most of us won’t face red martyrdom, but white martyrdom meets us daily. Losing reputation, choosing integrity over applause, offering up small sacrifices, and serving when no one notices—all of it trains us to stand steady when it counts. If you’re hungry for a faith that is honest, courageous, and merciful, this conversation offers practical steps and deep encouragement to live the Gospel in public without losing your soul. If it resonates, share it with a friend, hit follow, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Visit TheAccentOnline.org
Subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Follow us on YouTube



Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol, Vincent Reilly, Cliff Gorski, John Zylka, Sarah Hartner

SPEAKER_03:

You're listening to the Catholic Act of the podcast. We discussed the acts that Jesus performed that stunned his disciples. Great to be back, Jordan.

SPEAKER_01:

You don't know us by now, you're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm Jordan Waco here with Father Hamilton and Father Poojal. And we're both stunned. Okay, today's topic is Stephen Gets Stoned. Now, Jordan, remember that's in the biblical sense. Right, right, right, right. But Stephen is one of the seven deacons ordained by the apostles and begins to preach the name of Jesus. And he's such a good preacher that the Acts of the Apostles tell us that Stephen was filled with grace and power and was working great wonders and signs among the people. In other words, he spoke with such boldness that the people responded with rocks.

SPEAKER_02:

I know, because imagine on a Sunday we're preaching and someone's like, This is the best homily ever, and then you get stoned to death.

SPEAKER_01:

That's like George W. Bush when they threw that shoe at him. He dodged it, he had those reflexes.

SPEAKER_03:

So many shows like did like a reenactment of that, like really where they throw a pie or something at like a speaker. But yeah, so you know if you guys want to expand upon that a little bit. What's this one word, the Sanhedrin? Sanhedrin, George. Sanhedrin.

SPEAKER_02:

They're one of the groups of the Jewish authorities at the time.

SPEAKER_01:

Like the they're like the magisterium of the of the Jews. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so we just taught him a new word. The Sanhedrin.

SPEAKER_03:

The Sanhedrin saw that his face was like the face of an angel. Can you guys tell me who was Stephen? What's his backstory?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so Stephen, we just heard about it as the church continues to grow in their need. So Stephen's one of the seven that is then ordained a deacon to go and take care of especially the needs of the early church and the poor and the outcast and uh the goods, the physical, tangible goods of the church. But also, as you mentioned, he's preaching. And so Stephen is learning from the apostles how to preach and what we talked about before with charygma. And he's really convicting those that are listening to him. There's others that come up and try to challenge him, but he has too much wisdom and wit and ability as he's spurred on by the Holy Spirit. And so eventually he's hauled in before the Sanhedrin. We remember the Sanhedrin from the time of Jesus' own trial, that these are the Jewish leaders of whether that be the rabbis, but also part of that would be the Sadducees or the priests of the temple. Those are in a Jewish authority structure. And so as they called Christ before them, they took Christ up upon the charges of what? Blasphemy, right? That he's blaspheming God by saying that he is the Son of God, that he has a divine nature, and so on and so forth. And Jesus talks about the Son of Man riding upon the clouds as an allusion back to the Old Testament of the prophecy of Daniel. And then what do they do? They rip their garments, rend their garments, and then they condemn him right there, and then hand him over to Pilate, of course, the Romans, for Jesus to be crucified. Who who was he though? Where did he come from?

SPEAKER_02:

He would have responded to the charygma, one of those first groups. And what's interesting too with Stephen, before we get into the whole story, is also we have to look at when the church celebrates Stephen. And so the feast of Saint Stephen is celebrated the day after Christmas. And so we celebrate the birth of Christ who came to save the world. And the very next day we celebrate the first martyr, who ha, as we celebrate his birth into glory, his birth into heaven, who gave his life just as Christ would.

SPEAKER_03:

The Acts of the Apostles contains a long discourse from Stephen to the Jewish Sanhedrin that gives a summary of salvation history, starting with Abraham through the Exodus accounts of Moses to the building of the temple, proclaiming the glory of God, and that despite all of these things, the people did not listen.

SPEAKER_01:

So more or less, Stephen's just roasting them. He's going back in salvation history and saying, this is how God has shown his glory and his promise, and this is how the people of Israel continually rejected it. Time of even before Israel, Abraham, down through Moses, especially Moses in the desert. And at the end of all this salvation history, the building of the temple and the people not noticing the glory of God, which is manifest in Jesus' coming as the Messiah and the one that they should believe in, he talks about the people there being stiff-necked people, which is a direct allusion back to Moses. And the entire irony of that is they are charging Stephen, the Sanhedrin is charging Stephen with blaspheming against God and against Moses. Whereas really Stephen's upholding the tradition that Moses himself challenged the people because they didn't accept the fullness of the revelation of God.

SPEAKER_02:

And Stephen's reminding the people that Christ came for the Jewish people first, for the chosen people. And we see that even early on with the disciples. They discuss: do we preach to the Gentiles? Do we do we go out and bring the Gentiles in? And yes, they do, because even the ones who Christ came for first rejected him. And so Stephen is reminding the people of that, which is a terrible reality. But again, it goes back to one of our former episodes where we talk about the need to challenge others and to speak the truth. And Stephen was not afraid to do so.

SPEAKER_03:

Picking up on what you say, the full quote Stephen calls them is stiff-necked people who are uncircumcised in heart and ears, just like their ancestors. Why does he say that to them? Like he has to realize that this is going to be a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01:

He's saying to them, too, that they have an outward sign for following God, circumcision, which is from the Old Testament and the Levitical laws. But what circumcision was always about is not just an outward show of faith, but an interior conversion. This is where we're getting back to that charisma that they're stiff-necked, they're not willing to turn, to change, to look to anything else as God's trying to lead them, and that they're not circumcising their hearts, giving all of themselves to God.

SPEAKER_02:

Opening your heart, opening your ears to be able to listen and realize that what you've done is because you're so closed off, they've missed the point, they've missed the message. And it's not simply just about following the laws of the Old Testament, but it's about hearing the law of love and then acting upon it. And so Stephen recognizes that in himself because he was in that situation not that long before he's preaching.

SPEAKER_03:

And he just was such a truth giver that he he wanted to tell them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, very convicted. I mean, you don't have to be the most eloquent speaker sometimes, but with conviction. As we know from this podcast. Yeah. No offense, Father Chris. I know. Thanks, Stephen. I appreciate that. I'm too busy writing Father's homilies. We're throwing stones, but it's okay. They don't hurt too bad. Yeah. Topical. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, there's a great painting of Saint Stephen, and he's in his Dalmatic, and it's stained with blood, right? So it's obviously showing the viewer that he was a deacon, he was martyred. But what's interesting is there's a pile of stones at his feet, but at the top of the pile of stones, there's this one stone that looks odd. And that stone is actually a loaf of bread. And so it's a tie between the charity of the office of the deacon, bringing food to the poor, but also the fact that he had the strength of the Eucharist in his life to be able to proclaim and to be able to say what needed to be said. And so, and in that, he never took off his diaconal vesture, his diaconal garments of service. And so it's reminding us that when we step into these roles, when the Lord puts us in these roles, and even as lay people, we have clear roles in the church. Each one of us are called to spread the gospel. And that doesn't mean that we remove ourselves from our situation in life, but rather we find a way to preach in that way, whether we're at work, we're at school, or, you know, you're sitting here behind your computer.

SPEAKER_01:

I can't help but thinking with all that pile of stones and so forth, and as we envision this as happening in the Acts of the Apostles, from earlier in Jesus' life, Palm Sunday, whenever he goes into Jerusalem triumphantly, there they're laying palms down before him, and the Pharisees and the different leaders of the Jewish people come up and say, Rebuke your disciples for all of this show and fanfare and so forth. And Jesus essentially says, If they don't cry out, the stones will. And so in Stephen's own story, what is crying out to heaven? Well, the stones, the martyrdom of Stephen, the great witness of the truth of the gospel, which is I'm not backing off of this. I stand right here. This is Calvary, this is the truth, and I'm willing to die for it, which always makes converts. When you see somebody like that, what did he have to gain from that? Really in the way of the world, nothing. But in everything with the Lord. And so he looks to heaven and he sees Jesus there. Getting stoned to death is pretty brutal.

SPEAKER_03:

Pretty brutal.

SPEAKER_02:

It's it's it's hard to imagine, but and and they didn't use massive stones. They would use smaller stones so that it would be dragged out because you don't want to knock the person unconscious quickly. Right. Well, and so you would use smaller stones that then would break bones little by little until you collapsed, and then they would continue to pound you with them, and eventually then you would succumb to those injuries. Father Andrew had said that martyrdom means to witness. And so these first witnesses of the faith remind us of what we're called to do. And it doesn't mean that each one of us are going to be martyred in this bloody manner, but the church has that great phrase of white martyrdom versus red martyrdom. Red meaning you're giving your actual blood and your entire life. But each one of us have moments of martyrdom, white martyrdom, little things that we can offer to God, right? Our school teachers would always say offer it up, just like these new chairs. You know, we said, gotta offer it up. Those pains. But what does that mean? It means to nobody's gonna know what we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01:

Not at all.

SPEAKER_02:

Not at all.

SPEAKER_03:

The chair he they're complaining about our new chairs, they're uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02:

We're really offering it up, you know. We're saving souls.

SPEAKER_01:

But the martyrdom You could keep going. I just wasn't white white martyrdom. One of the ways in which in the modern culture, white martyrdom is a reality is losing reputation. For example, whenever I kind of came back to my own faith from being agnostic and then accepting Catholicism again and then deciding to go off to be a priest, a lot of the people that were around me that were my friends, we had different values. And I lost a reputation for who I was and they wanted me to be for what I was going to do. It's not easy to follow Christ in the midst of the world today to say, well, I'm gonna live this disciplined life of a disciple, or I'm giving up maybe some of the goods of this world or what people think are the goods of this world to live for the next. And so your reputation can be harmed by that, but that's a small white martyrdom that we're called to do, even as we have to go along with other agendas of the world that don't fit our Christian teaching and practice.

SPEAKER_03:

So that kind of tells us, you know, what Stephen's witness uh teaches us, but how can we be like Stephen, the first martyr?

SPEAKER_01:

In service. Stephen was only able to be a martyr and give up his life in that way by continued discipline of lowering himself in service, of saying, My life is not my own. You don't just become a martyr one day and it's there. You have to be prepared for that. And so he already was dying to himself daily, and so that when his life was demanded of him that day, he could say yes, he was ready to say yes.

SPEAKER_02:

And the other tie with uh the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, think about the woman caught in adultery in the Gospels who is encircled by the very people who killed Stephen, and they were ready to kill this woman, stone her to death. And what does Jesus do? Stops and asks, that who is without sin should throw the first stone, and they all one by one drop their stones to the ground and disperse, and then the woman converts and changes her heart. And so we see this play all throughout the scriptures, and anytime we're willing to risk it all, just like Jesus was risking himself to save that woman, we find people really hold on to that, and that makes that makes disciples.

SPEAKER_01:

And very beautifully, Stephen loves his enemies in a way in which that he preaches the good news and the truth, because loving your enemy is actually willing their good eternally. That's what it means to love. Love's a very confused world in the modern day. People want it to be a bunch of different things, but as in essence, what love means is to will the good of the other eternally, even sometimes at my own physical expense, you know, laying down your life for those that you love. And so Stephen isn't bittered, embittered by all of this different show force against him and so on. But what does he cry out right before he dies? Essentially for them to be forgiven that they don't know, which is a direct allusion back to Jesus himself on the cross when he looks down not in condemnation, but he looks down in mercy and says, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. So Stephen in his death takes on the very image of Christ. That's that whole story, condemned by the Sanhedrin, telling the truth, not backing off of it, and then even forgiving in the midst of persecution. And so he lays out as the first martyr the exact witness that all of the martyrs after him should have. And the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And so we see after Stephen and the Acts of the Apostles, a continued growth. Even one of their greatest preachers, one of the gravest, greatest servants of the early church is killed. And it doesn't thwart the growth of the gospel in the church, but actually accelerates it more and more. And makes it stronger. Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent podcast. Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe to our show. See in great stained glass windows, especially throughout like the Gothic stylation, that you'll see different images of the saints, but especially the martyrs, and they'll have something with them signifying the way that they died. So Stephen would be often depicted then with stones around him as a sign of his martyrdom. Say Saint Catherine of Alexandria, she died by a spiked wheel, right? It's always by her leg. And so the martyrs, the signs of their torment in this life become badges of honor and accolades into the next. And so it's something very interesting to contemplate. What would we be depicted with? Them up there. Each other's thorn. What? Why are you looking at me?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, so there he is.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, so we're done.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, episode five.