The First Martyrs
As the Christian family grew in numbers, so did the pastoral needs of the community. The apostles knew their own chief mission was preaching, so they ordained seven men “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” to serve the needs of the community as deacons.7 Stephen, one of the seven, was later arrested by the Jewish authorities for allegedly teaching against Moses — that is, the Law — and the Temple. Brought before the high priest and the Sanhedrin, Stephen presented a catechesis of Christ, illustrating that “the mystery of the Cross stands at the center of the history of salvation as recounted in the Old Testament … that Jesus, Crucified and Risen, is truly the goal of all this history.”8 Enraged by Stephen’s testimony, the assembly rushed him outside the city and stoned him, while a man named Saul watched over their garments. Saint Stephen, the first martyr of the Church, forgave his attackers before he died.
The first apostle to give the ultimate witness of love for Christ and the Church was Saint James the Greater, the son of Zebedee and brother of Saint John the Beloved. The Roman Emperor Claudius (r. A.D. 41–54) made Herod Agrippa (r. A.D. 41–44), king of the Jews; shortly thereafter, Herod began a persecution of the Church in Jerusalem in order to quash a movement that reverenced a different King. He ordered the beheading of James and the imprisonment of Peter, who was miraculously freed.9 Tradition holds that before his martyrdom in Jerusalem, James embarked on a missionary journey to the far reaches of the western Mediterranean and brought the Gospel to the shores of the Roman province of Hispania. Tradition further attests that after his death in Judea, the relics of James were miraculously translated to Spain, where they were discovered in the ninth century. Eventually, a grand cathedral arose at the spot, known as Santiago de Compostela, which has remained a popular pilgrimage destination since the Middle Ages.10
The Spread of the Gospel
Jesus Christ never intended his saving message to remain only in the Roman province of Judea. Motivated by the command of Christ and emboldened by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the apostles left Jerusalem to spread the Gospel into the world.11 Amazingly, these men traveled not only throughout the expansive Roman Empire, which had organized the known world and provided well-kept roads for travelers, but also beyond its borders. Tradition holds that John the Beloved traveled throughout Asia Minor, Andrew preached in Greece and modern-day Ukraine, Bartholomew went south to Arabia and perhaps India as well, Jude made his way to Mesopotamia and perhaps Armenia and Iran, Matthew may have traveled to Ethiopia, Philip journeyed to Asia Minor, Simon trekked to Iran, and Thomas spread the Good News in southern Iran and India.12 Although it is interesting to note how far the apostles traveled, and to imagine the hardships they endured for love of Christ, it is vital for us to focus on what they did: preach. Their preaching was not to spread an idea or philosophy, since the Christian faith is neither of those things; rather, they gave witness to the person of Jesus. The Christian faith is ultimately the belief in the person of Jesus Christ and the modification of one’s life to reflect his teachings. The apostles, Christ’s closest friends on earth, concentrated on telling as many people as possible about the God-man whom they knew and loved.
The Greatest Missionary
When we read the Scriptures, we notice repeated examples of God taking the seemingly insignificant and endowing it with great significance, or taking the weak to humble the strong, or asking the unlikely to undergo a great mission. One of the best examples of that divine strategy is the calling of Saint Paul as the Church’s greatest missionary.
Saul, a Pharisee, was a zealous defender of the Jewish faith. Born in the city of Tarsus in the southeast corner of Asia Minor, Saul was well-educated, spoke Greek and Hebrew, and held Roman citizenship. Saul, filled with zeal to crush the blaspheming (in his eyes) followers of Jesus, was given the mission by the high priest to persecute Christians in Damascus, a city in Syria with a sizable Jewish population. So, Saul embarked on a journey to Damascus where, along the way, as we read in Acts, he encountered the Lord in a dramatic and shocking way. Profoundly changed by this encounter, Saul transformed from persecutor to missionary, and over the rest of his life he suffered for the Faith with repeated imprisonments, floggings, beatings, shipwrecks, and stoning.13 Ultimately, he made three missionary journeys to strategic centers of Roman rule, preaching first to the Jewish communities and, after rejection by the Jews, focusing on the Gentiles.14
Saul’s first missionary journey took place on the island of Cyprus, where he also changed his name to Paul. In the ancient world, Jews frequently had Greek names along with their given Jewish names. Saul’s name was similar to the Greek saulos, a derogatory word for the way prostitutes walk.15 Recognizing that his Jewish name might pose difficulties in preaching to the Gentiles, Saul changed his name to Paul, perhaps in honor of the Roman governor of Cyprus, Sergius Paulus, who converted as a result of Paul’s preaching.16 Paul’s second missionary journey encompassed several locations, including Galatia, Philippi, Thessalonica, and the city of Corinth, which had been initially established by Julius Caesar as a Roman colony where freed slaves and army veterans settled. Paul’s last missionary journey was a three-year stay at Ephesus.
Paul’s missionary activity produced three vital effects in the early Church. First, his tireless journeying spread the Faith throughout the Roman Empire in centers of political and economic importance, which allowed for the rapid growth of the Church as the Faith spread easily along the Roman roads and waterways of commerce and government business. Second, Paul did not simply preach the Gospel and leave the new converts to their own devices. Rather, he chose and mentored men, known as “elders” (in Greek, presbuteroi, from which the word “presbyters,” or “priests,” derives) to lead their communities, providing continuity and an established hierarchical foundation. Third, Paul kept in contact with his nascent Christian communities by writing letters, which comprise thirteen of the twenty-seven inspired books in the New Testament. Paul’s missionary journeys successfully solidified the Faith in the Roman world. His success was grounded in the saving message of Jesus itself and was aided by Paul’s versatility and adaptability; “he had the power to translate the Palestinian Gospel into language intelligible to the Greek world.”17 We cannot overstate the importance of Paul to the history of the Church. The Apostle to the Gentiles was “the greatest of converts, the greatest of disciples, greatest of missionaries [and] the follower in whom more than any other is mirrored the Master.”18
A Gentile Converts
The presence of Jewish communities throughout the Roman Empire helped the early Church grow by providing groups in major centers where the first Christian missionaries could bring the Gospel. The earliest members and converts to the Faith were Jews, and the early Christians were very conscious of their connection to Judaism. But Paul’s experience had proved that the Faith met resistance in the Jewish synagogues of the Roman Empire, so his missionary focus shifted to the Gentiles, who eagerly responded to the message and became members of the Church. One early Gentile conversion is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles and involves a vision received by Peter.
The Jewish people were a separated people in the ancient world. Their kosher laws forbade the eating of foods common in the Gentile world, which had produced a division between Jew and Gentile. When Peter was near the city of Joppa, he fell into a trance while waiting for something to eat. He saw the sky open and a blanket coming down from heaven filled with animals. A voice commanded him to get up and eat, but Peter refused, for the food was unclean. The scene repeated itself three times before the vision ended. Eventually, Peter realized that the larger meaning of the vision was that the divide between Jews and Gentiles was over because of Christ. The purpose of the dietary laws, to remind the Jewish people of their salvation from slavery in Egypt by the Lord, was abrogated by the New Covenant of Christ. After the vision, men sent by a Roman centurion came to the house where Peter was staying and asked him to come to Caesarea. The centurion had received a visit by an angel, directing him to send for Peter.19
A Roman centurion was akin to a noncommissioned officer in our modern militaries. To be a centurion, a soldier was required to have at least sixteen years of military service. These officers were the