Face of an Angel

20 April 2026  Acts 6:8-15

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

“…his face was like the face of an angel.” (Acts 6:15)

In A.D. 285 St. Anthony of the Desert retired into the wilds of Upper Egypt (Pispir, near Luxor) and spent 20 years there in seclusion doing battle with demons. He finally returned to civilization in 305. Thomas Merton describes how he looked:

They did not see a dead man, or a man twisted by madness and fanaticism, and crude half-idiot hatreds, but one whose countenance shone with the simplicity and peace of Eden and the first days of the unspoiled world. It was a face that made expressions like “self-possession” and “self-control” look ridiculous, because here was a man who was possessed not by himself, but by the very uncreated and infinite peace in Whom all life and all being lie cradled for eternity. He was more of a person than they had ever seen because his personality had vanished within itself to drink at the very sources of reality and life. (The Waters of Siloe, p. 4)  

That was the kind of face that Stephen had, and it filled the leaders of the Sanhedrin with rage, and their hands with rocks. Stephen wasn’t supposed to look like that. The Sanhedrin thought they were the only ones entitled to have the confidence and composure that come from being soaked in the Truth.

Angels in the Bible sometimes appear with human faces. More often they appear in forms so frighteningly unfamiliar that their first words to people had to be “Fear not” (e.g. the Bethlehem shepherds in Luke 2:10). And once in a while angels appear not with, but, so to speak, in human faces, like one did with St. Stephen

But they didn’t have the whole Truth; their information was not up to date. They were working with old data. It was like they were still trying to make the epicycles of Aristotle work to explain planetary motion after someone had already figured out that something else was at the center of the System – not the earth, but the Son (get it? 😊). They didn’t want something else at the center – it would turn their whole world upside down. Even though the Son at the center made more sense of their own story, even though it was better news than they had ever allowed themselves to imagine.

They preferred their rage to Stephen’s face, and so they smashed it with rocks.

But just like stomping on flames scatters sparks and embers that only set other things on fire, Stephen’s death scattered disciples all the way to Antioch in Syria, where Greek-speaking pagans heard the gospel and cheerfully recognized that the Good News was better news than they had ever heard, and just as cheerfully tossed their stale paganism away for living bread (cf. John 6:51). They even came up with a name for the believers that stuck: Christians (Acts 11:26).

Angels in the Bible sometimes appear with human faces. More often they appear in forms so frighteningly unfamiliar that their first words to people had to be “Fear not” (e.g. the Bethlehem shepherds in Luke 2:10). And once in a while angels appear not with, but, so to speak, in human faces, like one did with St. Stephen, radiating the deep confidence, composure and peace that the insecure see as insolence, but the hopeful drop everything to follow. St. Anthony got that kind of confidence by fighting demons and winning, by seeking the company of the heavenly messengers that we are assured eternally behold the face of God (cf. Matthew 18:10). It is impossible to stomp the angel out of anyone’s face once it takes up residence there – it just winds up spreading the power around farther and deeper.