Vatican City, May 2, 2012 / 12:12 pm
As he reflected on the life and death of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, Pope Benedict said that reading Sacred Scripture helps develop a prayerful relationship with God.
“Our prayer must be nourished by listening to the Word of God, in communion with Jesus and his Church,” said the Pope May 2, noting how St. Stephen’s courage before those who condemned him to death was “clearly grounded in a prayerful re-reading of the Christ event in the light of God’s word.”
The Pope was addressing over 20,000 pilgrims who gathered under sunny skies in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly general audience.
Pope Benedict’s comments on the discourse of St. Stephen before the Sanhedrin continued a series of reflections on the topic of prayer.
“Stephen’s discourse before the court, the longest in the Acts of the Apostles, develops from this prophecy of Jesus, who is the new temple, who inaugurates the new cult and replaces the ancient sacrifices with the offering of himself on Cross,” he said.
St. Stephen was accused of declaring that Jesus would destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and of changing the customs of Moses. The Pope explained that St. Stephen appealed to the Jewish scriptures to prove how the laws of Moses were not subverted by Jesus but, instead, were being fulfilled.
“In his speech Stephen begins with the call of Abraham, a pilgrim to the land indicated by God and which was only a promise,” the Pope said, charting how St. Stephen explained the roles of biblical figures like Joseph and Moses in the story of salvation.
“In these events narrated in Sacred Scripture, which Stephen religiously listens to, God, who never tires of encountering man despite often finding stubborn opposition, always emerges,” the Pope said.