Yeah, I know this is very late but it is something I was thinking about a lot during the Christmas break. For years, I never paid much attention to the feasts on either side of Christmas Day: December 24th-Feast Day of Adam and Eve, and December 26th-Feast of St. Stephen. I think these three days are significant in illustrating salvation history.
“In the beginning”, the creation stories take us through a
fantastical illustration of the formation of the universe. The likes of J.R.R.
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis have taken their cues from these first three chapters of
the Bible in their own creation narratives—Tolkien’s “The Silmarillion” and Aslan’s
creation of Narnia in Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew”. Adam and Eve, being the
first humans, set the stage for the rest of human history. They had the
privilege of experiencing a perfect relationship with their creator and living
out the first nuptial relationship with no fear of the other’s gaze on their
nakedness.
Soon after, the tides change. The temptation of Eve and the
cowardliness of Adam “who was there with her” not protecting his wife, allowed
sin to enter into the world and to change the course of the human experience.
But even in this story there is a glimpse of hope, a foretaste of Christmas and
the coming of Jesus in the first Gospel, the protoevangelium. “I will put
enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; They
will strike at your head, while you strike at their heel,” Genesis 3:15. It is through
the new Adam and the new Eve, Jesus and Mary, that we see the redemption of Adam
and Eve, who caused our fall. The following day, December 25th, we
celebrate the coming of “her” offspring.
On December 26th, we remember the death of the first
Christian martyr, St. Stephen. In the Acts of the Apostles St. Stephen gives
witness to the story of salvation history and God’s interaction with Israel to
the fulfillment of the Old Testament stories and prophecies in Jesus Christ. He
was taken to the Sanhedrin due to his perceived heresy of elevating Jesus above
Moses and the temple, which in fact is what he did. There truly was no defense
for him; this lead to his martyrdom by stoning.
Why bookend Christmas with these dramatic stories? Christmas,
mistakenly viewed as a fluffy story, in fact is anything but. In close reading
of the Gospel story of Jesus’ birth we see that from the beginning he entered
the world with opposition as a defenseless baby. I encourage you to learn more
through Fr. Barron’s video on the Christmas story and the danger of Luke’s
subversive account: Fr. Barron comments on The Nativity of Luke's Gospel
These bookend feast days give us the trajectory of the Christian
story. We have the fall and the entrance of sin into the human experience. Then
we have the fulfillment of the protoevangelium through Mary’s submissiveness
and Jesus’ incarnation, his entrance into the world through her. Finally, we arrive
at the growth of the early church and the witness of evangelization and living
out The Way through Stephen. In the face of death, Stephen continues to live
out his faith and preaches the truth though this leads to his physical demise and
guaranteed sanctification. He shows us how to truly live with reckless abandon.
The beauty of the calendar of the Catholic Church is that we are
reminded daily of where we’ve been, where we’re headed, and how we should live,
as portrayed by those who have come before us. The bookends of the feasts of
Adam and Eve and St. Stephen remind me of the adventure of our journey from our
fall to salvation. All I’ll take that dangerous adventure any day over the safe,
neutered, sterilized Christmas of magical reindeer and snowmen.
