You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints.

This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Welcome to Form Live. I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute.

And with me is Dr. Michael Barber, a professor of biblical studies here at the Augustine

Institute.

It's our joy to be with you.

And this week we're going to hear a lot in the readings, the daily readings from Acts

of the Apostles, about St. Stephen.

And we hear his trial and then his martyrdom.

And so we're going to talk and dedicate this as a kind of Bible study on St. Stephen and his trial and martyrdom.

Because Stephen becomes one of the first martyrs in the early Christian movement, and he's also one of the

early key teachers, and he does a lot that really sets the groundwork for the mission work of the

church. And of course, when we talk about St. Stephen, one of the beautiful things about the

Easter season is that the church always goes back to its beginnings, to the beginning of the church,

to that moment of fervor and fire that followed after Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

And so what we do is we go back and we read Acts of the Apostles and it follows through

in the readings of the Mass for Eastertide. Every Easter tide we do this, every time after Easter. And it's such a joyful

proclamation as we hear about Peter and John proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus. And of course,

there's going to be tensions and there's going to be confrontation with the authorities. And then

Stevens, full of the Holy Spirit, and he's going to be a great witness and yet we're going to have

his martyrdom and all of a sudden you're like wait martyrdom that doesn't fit the Easter season

...