The Story of Saint Stephen, King Saint of Hungary, Whose Feast Day in 2016 Is Tuesday, August 16

[mdgspencer]

Saint Stephen is a giant in the history of Hungary, who founded it as a country and brought his people to the faith. Placing his realm under the protection of the Virgin Mary, he worked to make his pagan people Christians, and succeeded. Everything he did was in service to God.
sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_stephen_king_of_hungary.html

 

[Hatikvah]

When he was fifteen years old, his father gave him the commandment of his armies, seeing his virtue and Christian ardor. Already Stephen was beginning to root out idolatry and transform the pagan customs still existing among the people. At twenty years of age, he succeeded his good father, who died in 997. He suppressed a rebellion of his pagan subjects, and founded monasteries and churches all over the land.

Oddly, the preexisting Hungarian pagan religion believed that the Hungarians were descended from the same Nimrod (“Nimrud” in Hungarian) in the Book of Genesis, the King of Cush and a giant. The later Christian Hungarian chroniclers connected the Hungarian mother goddess with the Virgin Mary, too.

He often went out in disguise to exercise his charities; and one day a troop of beggars, not satisfied with the alms they received, threw him down, tore out handfuls of his hair and beard, and took his purse. He prayed to the Lord and thanked Him for an insult he would not have suffered from enemies, but accepted gladly from the poor who, he said to Him, are called Your own, and for whom I can have only indulgence and tenderness. He bore all reversals with perfect submission to the Will of God.

A true saint indeed. I’m glad he’s canonized.