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August 0⃣3⃣

_Feast_ 🌟
*FINDING OF THE BODY OF SAINT STEPHEN*



This second festival in honour of St. Stephen, _(the First Martyr)_ was instituted by the church on the occasion of the discovery of his precious remains.

St. Stephen was stoned to death for Our Lord by a mob of angry Jews. Scripture ends its account by telling us that *“devout men took order for Stephen’s funeral, and made great mourning over him.”* _(Acts 8:2)_

But who were those “devout men” and where did they bury the precious remains⁉

*The answers to these questions were revealed to the world almost 400 years after the event.*

In the year 410, the city of Rome was sacked and plundered by the barbarian tribes. The Pagans claimed that this misfortune was the fault of the Christians. Since the Roman gods had been so insulted by the Christians who refused them divine honor, that the gods had turned their backs on the Roman Empire.

In order to defend the Church against this calumny, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote his great work, "The City of God". Such a defense must have been a great consolation to the faithful, but greater still was the heavenly consolation that came in the form of miracles. For at this time began a series of supernatural prodigies which included miraculous findings of the relics of the saints. One of these was the miraculous findings of the relics of St. Stephen.

The soul of Saint Gamaliel appeared to the priest Lucian in AD 415 and told him where to find the relics of Stephen.

Saint Gamaliel sent Lucian to Bishop John of Jerusalem with a strange message: *“Make haste to open our sepulchre, that by our means God may open to the world the door of His clemency, and may take pity on His people in the universal tribulation.”*

The relics of Saints Stephen, Gamaliel, Nicodemus, and Abibo. were found according to the directions given to the priest Lucian by St. Gamaliel, who revealed that they had been buried on his own estate in Capergamela, about twenty miles outside of Jerusalem.

Upon the opening of St. Stephen's coffin the earth shook, and there came out of the coffin such a sweet odour that no one remembered to have ever smelled anything like it before.

*The relics were found on 3 August AD 415.* The relics of Saint Stephen were translated several months later to Jerusalem proper on 26 December AD 415.

The Church’s liturgical lesson for 3rd August relates that *“at the rumor of what had occurred, a great crowd came together, and many of them who were sick and weak from various ailments went away perfectly cured. The sacred body of St. Stephen was then carried with great honour to the holy church of Sion.”*

The miraculous cures continued and the whole prodigy expanded when portions of the relics were sent all over the Catholic world, including North Africa, where St. Augustine built a shrine in honor of St. Stephen.


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St. Gamaliel is none other than the famous Pharisee mentioned in Acts, Chapter Five, who counseled the Sanhedrin not to put St. Peter and his companions to death. _(“I say to you, refrain from these men — if it be of God, you cannot overthrow it” Acts 5:38-39.)_
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St. Paul and St. Gamaliel had witnessed the martyrdom of St. Stephen. This would explain in part why the Protomartyr was buried on Gamaliel’s estate.
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Photius relates that the Apostles St. Peter and St. John, had baptized Gamaliel together with his son and Nicodemus.
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Perhaps more reliable is St. John Chrysostom’s reference to an ancient tradition that Gamaliel converted even before St. Paul did.
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St. Abibo was the second son of Gamaliel
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St. Nicodemus was the Pharisee, who had obtained the permission from Pontius Pilate to bury the Body of Jesus after Crucifixion.




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