Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
December 26, 2023
My brothers and sisters in Christ,1
I guess first of all I want to ask your prayers for Fr. Peter and for myself because we celebrate our birthday today. Fr. Peter I don’t know what it means to celebrate our birthday on the feast of St. Stephen, first martyr, so maybe we are called to martyrdom too.
But we have his intercession, that’s for sure.
So as we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, I was thinking that the Church gives us this feast on the day after Christmas to remind us that our faith in Jesus Christ is not just warm feelings and beautiful ideas.
We are following a divine Person, Jesus Christ, and following him is not always easy, as we know. Our faith is, just as Jesus told us it would be, a beautiful way of service and love, but it is also a way of the cross.
And so today, on the day after our beautiful and peaceful celebration of our Lord’s birth as an infant, we are hearing about the martyrdom of St. Stephen, a great preacher and a servant of the poor of Jerusalem.
It is a challenging scene, but we also see Stephen’s great courage to proclaim Jesus.
And we also see where his strength comes from.
St. Stephen is strengthened by keeping his eyes fixed on heaven. As we heard: “He looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”
St. Stephen also understood the promise that Jesus makes in the Gospel today.
As we heard, Jesus describes persecutions and divisions, even among families. But then he makes this great promise. He says: “You will be hated by all because of my name, but whoever endures to the end will be saved.”
Strong words, but they are a pledge from the Lord. Not only to Stephen and the first Christians, but to all of us, each one of us.
Jesus will never let us down or leave us alone. If we stand up for his name’s sake, if we defend the truth of his teachings and never deny him, then he will go with us. He goes with us every single moment of our entire lives.
We can do all things with him who strengthens us.
So my dear brothers and sisters, as we continue in this Christmas, let us ask for the grace to be like Stephen, always keeping our eyes on Jesus, and walking in his footsteps, and proclaiming his love to the people of our time.
Let us remember in a special way today, all those Christians in the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Jesus.
We ask St. Stephen to intercede for them and give them the strength to persevere and bear witness, as he did.
And let us ask our Blessed Mother Mary to give us all the courage to follow her Son, and to endure and persevere until the end.