Monday, 12/26/11
On the Feast of St. Stephen I always like to say a word for
the men who stoned him. Sure, they did a terrible thing, but their religious
convictions made them feel they were doing the right thing.
St. Luke in his “Act of the Apostles” identified Stephen’s
killers as “members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen.” He went on to say
they were Cyrenians, Alexandrians, and people from Cilicia and Asia.
Let’s look at the way their synagogue came about. Rome had a
way for preventing rebellion from the Jews scattered around all of the
Mediterranean’s ports. Rome rounded up five young Jews from each place,
confining them as hostage in Rome for five years. The threat of executing those
boys kept the people at home from rebelling.
The boys chosen as hostages were not very religious to begin
with, but after being confined for their beliefs, they usually began taking
those beliefs more seriously. Many of them became so religious that when their
five years were up, instead of returning to their homes, they settled in
Jerusalem to take part in the temple worship. They formed their own “Synagogue
of the Roman Freedmen.”
They had come to believe that being religious meant
observing kosher, and they were angered by Stephen who was telling people that
observing kosher wasn’t all that important.
Of course it was wrong for them to stone Stephen, but God,
knowing their good intentions, might have forgiven them.
One thing that inclines us to be understanding of their
motives is the fact that their was a young man watching over the coats they
took off to throw better. That young man who was encouraging them was Saul, the
future St. Paul.
The case of Saul and those young men should warn us against
hating people for views they ling to in all honesty.
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