THE INVENTION (FINDING) OF ST. STEPHEN, PROTOMARTYR, August 3rd

Collect

GRANT, O Lord, that, in all our sufferings here upon earth for the testimony of the truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed : and being filled with the Holy Ghost may learn to love and bless our persecutors by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen ; who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Who livest and reignest with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Collect for St. Nicodemus

O GOD, who didst shew great mercy unto thy servant Nicodemus in that first thou didst reveal unto him the mystery of baptismal regeneration (even though he came unto Jesus secretly by night for fear of the Jews), and thereafter didst give him grace to confess the same Jesus openly in the Sanhedrin and at the holy Sepulchre : give us such an increase of faith and grace that we may not fear to bear the reproach of Christ ; but rather may serve him in boldness with fervent zeal. Through the same Jesus Christ, thy Son our Lord, who livest and reignest with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

For the legend

IT is related that, for a long time, there lay hidden, in a mean and obscure place near Jerusalem, the bodies of the following Saints : Stephen the Protomartyr ; Gamaliel, the celebrated Doctor of the Old Law, who withstood his fellow-members of the Sanhedrin when they desired to put the Apostles to death ; Nicodemus, who had defended Jesus in the Sanhedrin, and afterward came to him by night, unto whom was thereupon revealed the mystery of baptismal regeneration, and who assisted in the burial of Jesus ; and Abidon, the son of Gamaliel. Today's feast is a commemoration of the finding of the holy relicks of these men of God. And many places which are dedicated under the invokation of Saint Stephen keep this day as their name-day, in order to avoid the celebration of a patronal festival in Christmastide. Moreover, in places where a feast is kept in honour of Saint Nicodemus, or the other aforementioned holy ones, it is observed on this day.

THESE bodies were discovered in the ruins of an old tomb, at a place called Caphar-Gamala, twenty miles from Jerusalem, by the priest of the place, whose name was Lucian. According to an account purporting to be written by Lucian himself, which same many scholars accept as genuine, the finding of the bodies was on this wise. One night, whilst Lucian was asleep in the baptistery of his church, where he was accustomed to stay from evening until dawn, the better to guard the sacred things thereof, Saint Gamaliel appeared to him in a dream, as a tall, comely old man of worshipful presence, and told him where the bodies were lying. Some authorities think that a tradition had come down in that place as to where the relicks were, and that Lucian's dream was but a confirmation to him of what was already commonly accepted as fact. Howbeit, Lucian found the relicks, and reported the matter to John, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, that they might have a more honourable burial. And the Patriarch, with his clergy, and many of the faithful, came with great solemnity, and removed the same on August 3rd, probably in the year 416, and gave them reverent sepulchre. And many that were sick found health at that time through the intercession of these holy ones. The relicks of Saint Stephen were carried with great pomp to an oratory hard by the Church of Sion at Jerusalem ; and parts of the relicks were taken elsewhere ; and during the Popedom of Pelagius I the remainder of them was brought to Rome, and laid in the tomb of the Martyr Saint Laurence, in the Veranian Field.

From the Treatise on the City of God by St. Augustine the Bishop (Lib. 22, Cap. 8 circa med.)

WHEN the Bishop Projectus brought some relicks of that most glorious Martyr Stephen to Tibilis, a great multitude came together and went out to meet him at the shrine. There, a blind woman asked to be led to the Bishop, who was bearing the hallowed relicks. On these she laid the flowers which she was carrying, took them up again, touched her eyes with them, and forthwith received her sight. Whereupon she went forward rejoicing, at the head of the amazed procession, choosing her own path, and needing no more that any should lead her. I remember also the relicks of this same Martyr which hath been placed in the town of Synica, hard by this city of Hippo. Lucillus, Bishop of that place, was carrying them, with a multitude going before and following after ; when, all of the sudden, by bearing this hallowed burden, he was healed of a fistula, from which he even then was suffering, and which was being treated by a physician, an intimate friend of his, who was about to use the surgeon's knife upon him. Brethren, let us so desire to obtain temporal blessings by the intercession of the Protomartyr that we may by imitating him deserve those which are eternal.

From the Anglican Breviary