Good King Wenceslas on the Feast of Stephen
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Soft and crisp and even
Merry 6th Day of Christmas! The Christmas Season abounds with all nature of celebrations and observances. We might be surprised that a large number of those observances involve martyrs. Even the joyous celebration of Christmas itself, as we saw yesterday, is also the feast of the martyr St. Anastasia. And we see the same thing today. The very first day after we celebrate the birth of our savior we commemorate the death of his first martyr, St. Stephen.
We read the story of his martyrdom in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 6-7). We also know St. Stephen’s name from the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.” The song does not actually tell us anything about Stephen himself. It instead describes how Good King Wenceslas goes out on the saint’s day, in an act of Christian charity. His mission is to share his Christmas bounty with a lonely and poverty-stricken old peasant.
A Christian King
Whether or not the incident recounted in the song ever happened, Wenceslas himself was real. He is based on Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia. He received the title of king posthumously. Holy Roman Emperor Otto I conferred the title on Wenceslas after his death in 935 AD. While his grandfather was the first Christian duke of Bohemia, it was Wenceslas himself who firmly established the Church there. He did so in the face of still strong pagan opposition and aligned the church of his homeland with the Holy See in Rome.
The First Martyr
St. Wenceslas, then, marks the beginning of Christianity among the Czechs. Likewise, St. Stephen’s feast is at the start of the Christmas season, and St. Stephen himself at the very beginning of Christianity, period. He was, in fact, the first Christian to give his life for the Faith after Christ himself. For this reason we call him the protomartyr, that is, “first martyr.” We find a vivid account of his death in the Acts of the Apostles:
But he [Stephen], full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together upon him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And he knelt down and cried with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul was consenting to his death. (Acts 7:55-8:1)
From Bethlehem to Calvary
Just as our Christmas joy is tempered by the realization that the child lying in the manger must someday hang on the Cross, St. Stephen reminds us, a mere day after the Feast of the Nativity itself, that following the Child of Bethlehem can mean our own Calvary. Jesus himself tells us: “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11).
How is it, then, that his coming is “Good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10)? Because, as our Lord goes on to say, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:12). Indeed, as we see in the account above from the Acts of the Apostles, St. Stephen doesn’t go to his death wailing and gnashing his teeth at the cruelty and injustice of it all. Instead, he gazes joyfully on his Savior in Heaven, and begs forgiveness for his persecutors. Countless martyrs since have done the same, up to the present day. Christ our Savior didn’t come to save us from unpleasantness in this world. He came instead to save us for eternal happiness with him in the next by rescuing us from our own sin.
The White-Robed Army
Which brings us back to Good King Wenceslas. He has more in common with St. Stephen than we might at first realize. It’s true that he established a strong foundation for the Church and exhibited exemplary personal piety and charity. It is also the case that not everyone appreciated those qualities, including other nobles still sympathetic to paganism. His own brother Boleslav was one of these, and treacherously murdered him.
At the time, it must have seemed that Wenceslas was the loser. His scheming brother had won, apparently, and St. Stephen had been vanquished by his persecutors. Today, however, over one thousand years later, the Czechs still love Good King Wenceslas. They remember the Christian monarch as one of the founders of their nation. His brother, on the other hand, carries the odious sobriquet Boleslav “the Cruel.”
Of more significance than his worldly reputation is the fact that the Church remembers Wenceslas as Saint Wenceslas, Martyr. We celebrate his feast on September 28th. Saints Stephen and Wenceslas stand together among the “white-robed army of martyrs” whom we see in the ancient prayer known as the Te Deum, gathered before the throne of God, praising their Creator, and interceding for all of us.
Mark His Footsteps
“Good King Wenceslas” is considered a Christmas carol, although it does not seem to have any direct reference to the Nativity of Our Lord. It does, however, encourage us to emulate the saints, such as Stephen and Wenceslas, who conformed themselves to Christ, especially as exemplars of Christ’s love. See St. Fulgentius of Ruspe’s sermon: St. Stephen – The Armor of Love. The words with which St. Wenceslas encourages his cold and frightened page in the carol could easily be spoken by Christ himself, and addressed to every one of us:
“Mark my footsteps, good my page
Tread thou in them boldly
Thou shall find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
Featured image top of page: The Stoning of St. Stephen, by Giacinto Gemignani, 17th century.
Good King Wenceslas: Music For Christmas
One of the beautiful things about the Christmas Season is the wealth of joyful music celebrating the birth of our Lord. I like to close all my Christmas Season posts with one of those wonderful songs. The clip below features (of course) ‘Good King Wenceslas’ by John Mason Neale.
The clip below features the voices Orchestra Victoria conducted by Richard Mills. Rebecca Rashleigh, Rebecca Gulinello, Shakira Dugan, Stephen Marsh and Timothy Reynolds sing.
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