FILE -- (AP)
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By Ralph Peters , December
26, 2016
The
second line of the Christmas carol slips past us. We hear “Good King Wenceslas
looked out…” But what about the next bit, “…on the Feast of Stephen?”
What’s that about?
December
26th is St. Stephen’s Day—the Feast of Stephen—long an important celebration in
the Christian calendar and now largely ignored. It’s time to bring it
back.
Stephen
was the first Christian martyr, the protomartyr, stoned to death in the years
of persecution that followed the death of Jesus. In the Acts of the
Apostles, Chapters Six to Eight, we learn that Stephen was “a man full of
faith,” appointed to oversee the care of neglected widows. Stephen took
on the established authorities, corrupt in deed and belief, and they could not
refute his arguments.
So,
in timeless human fashion, the powers-that-were bribed witnesses against
him. At the climax of his trial, knowing he was doomed, Stephen declared,
“I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of
God.”
Out
came the rocks.
What
has this to do with us, as the Year of Our Lord 2017 approaches? To
believing Christians, the answer might be “Everything.”
The
2,000-year-old Middle-Eastern Christian civilization that began in the days of
St. Stephen lies in ruins, persecuted as never before. As the Obama
administration averted its self-righteous gaze, a religious genocide already
underway accelerated across the region. Stubborn and dogmatic, the
administration refused to acknowledge the problem of Christian refugees—those
who’d survived the kidnappings, tortures, rapes, massacres and broad religious
cleansing—even to the extent of labeling those who wished to help Christians as
bigots.
In
Obama’s global village, there’s no room at the inn for Christian refugees.
There’s not even a stable.
We’ve
watched as a great religious civilization nears extermination. For
millennia, through good and horrid times, the three great monotheist religions
of the Middle East rubbed along together (with varying levels of
friction). Then, in the lifetime of many of this column’s readers, the
Jews were driven out. Next came the turn of the Christians, as well as a
number of minority faiths. Thanks to extremist Islam.
In
the Middle Ages, the majority of Christians lived in the east. The
doctrines of the faith were refined in Asia Minor, Palestine and North
Africa. The greatest monuments of Christianity’s first thousand years all
stood—a few still stand—in lands where Christians long have been persecuted and
are now massacred.
Now
the Christians are gone, their churches, monasteries and homes in ruins.
This
is a new age of martyrs. It’s a time when those who believe in the transcendent
generosity of Christ are driven from their homes to suffer exile. It’s an age
of blood spilled at a ravaged cross.
Even
Bethlehem, within living memory a majority-Christian city, has driven out the
followers of Jesus until perhaps a dwindling eighth of the population is
Christian.
Where
are the campus demonstrations against the torture, rape and murder, the
dispossession and massacre of Christians? Where is the outrage in the
media? Where are the modern Pharisees we call “public
intellectuals.” Where are the consciences in our can’t-be-bothered
government?
Those
Christians who survive the new barbarians become refugees with nowhere to
go. Assigned to “all-faith” asylum homes in Europe, they’re tormented,
beaten and threatened by violent migrants. Nor can they go elsewhere in
the Middle East.
Yet,
we in the United States bar the door against them—in the name of religious
tolerance, of all things. One day, we will be as ashamed of our denial of
Christian refugees as deeply as we are shamed by our rejection of Jewish
refugees from the Nazis.
In
this new age of martyrdom, a time when forces such as the Islamic State inflict
torments on Christian captives to rival the tortures endured by the early
saints, it’s time to revive St. Stephen’s Day to honor the countless martyrs
our leaders ignore.
This
is not meant as a call for religious division. But in this age of
shouting cults and fanaticism, a quiet consideration of Christian ordeals
deserves at least one day of our pampered lives.
Wenceslas,
too, became a saint—more or less by popular demand. He spread the faith
among his pagan subjects, only to be murdered by his brother. In the
Victorian-era carol, he’s a king (the historical figure was a duke) who spies a
poor man gathering twigs for a fire on the Feast of Stephen--a peasant who will
have no feast that day. And the king sets off in the snow on a personal
relief mission, followed by one page, the two of them bearing food and wine and
pine logs. That particular event may not have occurred, but the symbolism
of the gesture should stir us.
For
that matter, mark the words of the other old carols, too.
And
when you serve up your holiday leftovers on Monday, declare it the Feast of
Stephen. Remember those who are martyred as you eat, the tens of
thousands of Stephens whom we ignore.
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