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 2nd 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.
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A Christian King
Aside from the story of his martyrdom as described in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 6-7), St. Stephan’s name is known from the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.” The song does not actually tell us anything about Stephen himself. It describes instead how Good King Wenceslas goes out on the saint’s day. In an act of Christian charity he shares his Christmas bounty with a lonely and poverty-stricken old peasant. And, 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 from king Holy Roman Emperor Otto only after his death in 935 AD. Wenceslas’ grandfather was the first Christian duke of Bohemia, but it was Wenceslas himself who firmly established the Church there. In the face of still strong pagan opposition, he aligned the church in his homeland with the Holy See in Rome.
The Protomartyr
St. Wenceslas, then, marks the beginning of Christianity among the Czechs. Likewise, St. Stephen’s feast is at the start of the Christmas season. He himself stands 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 St. Stephen is known as 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)
Gazing Joyfully on the Savior
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. He dies joyfully gazing on his Savior in Heaven and begging 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, but instead to save us for eternal happiness with him in the next, by rescuing us from our own sin.
Saint Wenceslas
Which brings us back to Good King Wenceslas, who 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, and that his scheming brother had won, just as St. Stephen seemed to be vanquished by his persecutors. Today, however, over one thousand years later, Good King Wenceslas is still loved by the Czechs. They remember him as one of the founders of their nation, while his brother carries the odious sobriquet Boleslav “the Cruel.”
Of more significance than his worldly reputation is the fact that the Church recognizes Wenceslas as Saint Wenceslas, Martyr. We celebrate his feast day 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 Their Footsteps
John Mason Neale (who also translated “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” into English) wrote “Good King Wenceslas” in 1853. The story in the song is based on ancient stories about the historic Wenceslas’s charitable deeds. Neale and his music editor Thomas Helmore found the tune in a Finnish book called Piae Cantiones. The music for “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” came from the same source. Interestingly, the music they chose for “Good King Wenceslas” originally accompanied an Easter song, an actual Easter carol.
“Good King Wenceslas” itself is considered a Christmas carol, although it does not seem to have any direct reference to the Nativity of Our Lord. The setting is, of course, the day after Christmas. More importantly, it encourages us to emulate the saints, such as Stephen and Wenceslas, who conformed themselves to Christ, especially as exemplars of Christ’s love. St. Fulgentius of Ruspe makes just this point in today’s Office of Readings:
And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven; shown first in the king, it later shone forth in his soldier. Love was Stephen’s weapon by which he gained every battle, and so won the crown signified by his name.
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 Gimignani, 17th century
Music For Christmas: “Good King Wenceslas”
Loreena McKennitt’s version of “Good King Wenceslas”:
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