The Presence of the Spirit in Stephen

Do not allow yourself to die in circumcision; draw through repentance toward your own recognition, and kindle in the hearts the flame of the Spirit. For if they are improved in this way, it is evident that you will not stand against their sin, but having washed in the bath of grace, both your blood and mine, they will become free from the accusations.

These things happened and the drama was completed. And the armies of angels were rejoicing in the contest, marveling greatly and with much retinue leading Stephen into his own inheritance; but the devil was turned away empty, being terribly perplexed, yet trying to imitate a prophetic word about the spirit, saying something more bodily, as one carrying the face of a pot as a vessel and, on the contrary to what he expected, having succeeded in the very things he thought would diminish Christians, instead, he increased the list of the martyrs.

And what also toward Paul is the temple? For he too was one of the murderers, a true Benjamin, a wolf having snatched the lamb. For if he himself did not stone, but kept the garments of those stoning and served the people's crowd. Moreover, I shall see you soon, now trembling and breathing a wild passion like a weak old woman being led toward the Ananias of the truth, having tasted of it.

And I shall laugh very much when I hear you recounting your tribulations for the sake of the gospel and, among the other dangers, saying: 'At last I was stoned.' For it is necessary for you to defend yourself through stones against the stones, and by the same suffering to loose the accusation of sin.

It is also unbearable not to leave the vision of Stephen behind; for the God of all things always, foreseeing what is about to happen to the lives of sinful men, provides the remedy defensively in advance, which indeed He has done even here. For if the theophanies were completed only for the benefit of the combatant, it would have sufficed to become a voice from the heavens, just as at the baptism before, or later at the transfiguration, or even as with this Paul, when he was traveling toward Damascus.

Now, because the evil from Libya is about to lie in wait for the churches of God, and the ill-famed confusion of the hypotheses...

To lead into life, for this reason God, as if cutting ahead in advance and securing the souls of those who are to come later, shows himself to Stephen in a private and self-sufficient glory, and shows the Son in a perfected appearance, and places him at his own right hand, so that through the clarity of the persons he might interpret the underlying realities.

12.13.1 And someone might happen to say: The things concerning the Father and the Son are thus philosophized for you, but where is the Holy Spirit? For if, for the sake of the security according to faith, the Father was appearing from heaven with the Son, it was necessary for the Holy Spirit also to be present, so that some practical initiation might be accomplished for men through the vision. It is therefore necessary to say to the mind bearing this against us: O most wise, the examiner of readers must have both a correct mind and a strengthened memory, so that he may be able thus to run through all the written things together.

12.13.2 For if you also seek the presence of the Spirit, become a little higher than the stones and the marble, and you will find before the vision the Spirit speaking and being present with Stephen and preparing the athlete. For immediately at the beginning of the narrative he pre-announced this voice to us: 'Stephen, full of grace and truth, was doing signs and great wonders among the people' (Acts 6:8). And some rose up from the assembly called the Libertines and the Cyrenians and the Alexandrians and those from Cilicia and Asia, disputing with Stephen, and they were not able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking (Acts 6:9-10).

12.13.3 Behold, then, also the person of the Spirit has been made clear to us by the word. If this was written earlier, and the Father and the Son last, the faith is not deprived of anything regarding the order. For it is the custom of the Scripture to do this: sometimes naming the Son alone, sometimes the Spirit with the Son, or sometimes beginning from the Father and concluding in the Spirit; and the repetition of the beginning occurring from the Spirit through the Son, the word leads back to the Father.

12.13.4 And this idiom of custom is seen to be happening most without concealment by the great Paul. And it has been filled among us