This Sunday we will celebrate the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, traditionally referred to as "Ascension Thursday," as Acts tells us that Jesus appeared to the disciples during the forty days after Easter before ascending into heaven. The feast has been moved to Sunday to enable more people to take part in the celebration (in other words, even though it was a holy day of opportunity, as my professor liked to call them, very few people were actually attending mass when it was on Thursday). The result of this move, however, is that we do not hear the readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

I was struck by the fact that the first reading for the Seventh Sunday of Easter tells of the stoning of Stephen, because one of the headline videos on CNN today is a video of a 17 yr. old girl being stoned to death. (To see the video, click here, but be aware that the content is graphic.) Watching the video gave a whole new level of awareness to my reading the story of Stephen and other Christian martyrs who have been stoned, making me wonder how willing I would be to stand up and publically proclaim my faith under such terrifying circumstances. During the Easter season, during which the second reading is taken from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear the stoning or threat of stoning the early followers of Christ faced. In addition to Stephen's death, a death that Paul watched, Paul himself is stoned in Lystra and left for dead, but he didn't die, so his disciples are able to help him leave the city. Jesus was threatened with being stoned more than once, and of course, he prevents the stoning of a young woman in the Gospel of John. Stoning is horrific both in the suffering of the victim and in the mob mentality it emerges from and engenders.

More importantly, the video made me mindful that people, frequently women, are still suffering this fate today. The 17 yr. old girl in question was a Kurdish girl of the Yezidi faith (a pre-Islamic religion). She was stoned for being involved with a Sunni Muslim Iraqi boy. Yezidi girls are not allowed to date or marry outside of their religion. The stoning was an "honor killing." In retaliation, Sunni Iraqis attacked and killed 23 Yezidi men. And so the cycle of violence continues. Stoning is an issue in terms of such "honor killing" and as a form of execution in many parts of the world. Before we cast the first stone, so to speak, we must look at our own record. In our own Scripture, people were to be stoned for sacrificing their children to the god Molech, for blaspheming the name of the Lord, for being "spiritists" or mediums, for not keeping the Sabbath, for trying to convince another to serve other gods, for being a stubborn or unruly son who will not listen to or obey his father or mother, for having sex with a betrothed girl or being that betrothed girl, even if she is raped (in a city; if it takes place in a field, she is not guilty since she may have yelled for help and not been heard). As a country we also must not be quick to cast the first stone. We might not stone people, but remember that stoning is first and foremost (both now and in the days of the early Christians) a form of execution, a sentence handed down in a court of law after a trial; and as a country, we do execute people. It is difficult to take the moral high ground on issues such as this when our country is listed by organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Roman Catholic Church, next to countries like China, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc, in terms of human rights abuses in this regard. I won't continue on this line, as I have written on it previously, but the Church's teaching on this subject is very clear! For more information, see the USCCB website! When we read the stories of Christians being stoned, let us pray for all those who are being executed, both in our own country and around the world, and let us pray for all those who suffer religious persecution.