First Encomium on Saint Stephen

Contents

1. 701Gregory opens the feast of Stephen, which follows the Nativity, as one grace following another.
2. 703Gregory contrasts Christ’s birth with Stephen’s death, presents Stephen as the first martyr wrestling the devil before the angels, and begins the story with Pentecost.
3. 705Pentecost reverses Babel; amid the Church’s growth Stephen is chosen as deacon, a ministry not inferior to the apostles’, and through him the Spirit overcomes the devil’s disputants.
4. 707The devil, defeated in argument, works through false accusers and judges, but Stephen’s death scatters the apostles and spreads the Gospel to the nations.
5. 709Gregory exposes the injustice of the charges: Stephen merely foretold what would happen, Jesus was the one accused, and Jesus fulfilled rather than destroyed the law; the temple is gone in any case.
6. 711Stephen offers himself as a priestly sacrifice and prays for his murderers; Gregory, turning back to the trial, shows how he overcame every form of wickedness with its opposite virtue.
7. 713Stephen addresses his judges as brothers and fathers, rehearses Israel’s history from Abraham to Moses, and sees the glory of God and the Son of Man before he is rushed upon.
8. 715Stephen blesses his killers as Christ taught; Gregory then takes up the Pneumatomachi’s argument that Stephen saw the Father and the Son but not the Spirit.
9. 717Stephen saw the Father’s glory and the Son because he was full of the Spirit, in whose light alone God is seen; and the Son’s standing no more implies inferiority than his sitting in Psalm 110 and Hebrews.
10. 719Standing and sitting are said of God not bodily but to signify steadfastness in the good; whatever is said of the Son, the image, holds of the Father, the archetype. Gregory closes with a prayer to share Stephen’s grace.
11. 721The closing doxology of the first sermon on Stephen.