This year we have two Sundays in the 12 days of the Christmas season proper, but the first falls on a festival day that demands notice. And it calls us to look around the Christmas season as well. There are a series of saint days just after Christmas that go back to the ancient church. They’ve been on the church calendar forever. Sometimes they are called the “Comites Christi” or Companions of Christ” – St. Stephen (26th), St John (27th) and The Holy Innocents (28th). If you stop to think about those names it’s an interesting list for Christmastime.
St. Stephen is the first martyr. His story is found in Acts 6 and 7. He was first chosen as one of the seven deacons who were to administer the church’s community chest that took care of the widows and orphans. But somehow those seven deacons got involved in a lot more than that. The deacon Philip found himself preaching in Samaria and bi-locating by the power of the Spirit next to the Ethiopian Eunuch and then back in Galilee. But Stephen’s story precedes Philip’s. Acts says Stephen was “full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. (Acts 6:8 ESV).” And just like the story of Jesus, when one is full of grace and truth and performing signs and wonders, the world does not like it. Stephen is arrested and eventually stoned after he gives one of the great Jeremiad speeches of all time. If they treated Christ this way, the disciple can expect no less. At that stoning is where Saul, eventually Paul, enters the story. He heard the speech and held the cloaks of those doing the stoning. And was raised to a fever pitch of zealousness that he would get permission to hunt down the rest.
St. John is the counterbalance to the first martyr being the only one of the Apostles not to be a martyr. If Stephen’s service lasted but a couple of days from ordination to stoning, John was the youngest of the disciples and lived supposedly until over 100 years old after suffering exile on Patmos, the place of his Revelation. John cared for Mary during that time as the appointed son. And his care for Mary was also his care for the Church that his LORD had founded. As the Apostolic age came to a close, John was the final witness who often sorted out the solid word of God from the fake messages that seemed constant. If you read his three letters you will catch his concern over the many antichrists that have already entered the world (1 John 2:18). But even more importantly his reminders to “love one another (1 john 3:11)” which was the commandment given at the last supper. John is the companion of Christ in a full life of service.
The last of the companions are the Holy Innocents. We do not know the number. These are the children killed by Herod when he remembers a couple of years later that the Wise Men did not come back. So he kills all the male children in the Bethlehem region two and younger. It is a reminder of the fury of Satan and World. They know their time is short, and they will kill anything that reminds them of the hour. Anyone who reminds them of how they have failed in their callings. In our modern language we might call the Holy Innocents collateral damage. As we go about our lives – lives lived by the dictates of the World and Sin – we cause death. That is what sin and the world are about.
But this is exactly what Christ has come to rescue us from – from sin and death and the power of Satan. The children killed by the raving of a world are made holy by their association with Christ. And this is so for all of us. Whether we find ourselves called short like Stephen, called long like John or call unawares like the innocents, the Companions of Christ are all made Holy by Him. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.