December 7--St. Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

 

St. Ambrose of Milan by Lawrence OP is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

He initially refused the position of bishop, faced down an emperor, comforted a mother in her sorrows, and baptized the greatest philosopher of the first millennium.  Who is he?  None other than St. Ambrose of Milan, who became one of the first Doctors of the Church.  When the position of bishop opened in Milan in A.D. 374 he was serving as governor of the province.  He was not a baptized Christian, but the people acclaimed him bishop anyway, whereupon he ran away to hide.  Once, the emperor heard about the election, he affirmed it and Ambrose accepted, being baptize and ordained within the week.

However, once he became bishop, he invested his whole life into serving the people, correcting the heresy of Arianism, teaching orthodox theology in great homilies, and guiding the liturgy of Milan, which is called the Ambrosian Rite and still used today.  He confronted Emperor Theodosius in 390 after the emperor allowed/ordered the massacre of citizens of Thessalonica.  St. Ambrose required the emperor to do penance before he could receive the Eucharist.  Theodosius did so.  According to legend, he also comforted St. Monica when she came to him in tears:  "The child of those tears shall never perish."  That child was St. Augustine, who came to Milan to listen to St. Ambrose's sermons.  They gave him the intellectual grounding he needed to convert to Christianity, with St. Ambrose baptizing him.

St. Ambrose responded to God's call by giving his life over to God.  We, too, are called to give our lives to God.  We are called live our lives as disciples of Jesus:  loving, witnessing, serving, praying, worshiping, and working to bring about the Kingdom of God here on earth in our families, jobs, and associations.  We are called to the greatness of holiness!

June 22--St. Paulinus of Nola, Bishop

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What is a friend? A companion; someone to be with and share time with. Aristotle said a friend is “a single soul in two bodies.” Holy friendship is beyond that. It is a companionship in Christ. Our saint today was a holy friend to many saints, Augustine, Ambrose, Martin of Tours, Jerome, and more.

St. Paulinus of Nola was a political man, becoming Governor of Campania in Italy in the fourth century at a young age, serving the people. However, he lost favor with the political authorities and learned the limits of earthly ambition. He went to learn from St. Ambrose and then went to his native land of Bordeaux and was baptized. He found a new friend in his wife Therasia of Barcelona, with whom he had a son. But after their son died a week after birth they saw that God had another path for them. They gave up all their possessions and moved back to Nola in Campania, where they lived as brother and sister in a community. He had been ordained in Barcelona and took up priestly duties in Nola, eventually being chosen as bishop.

He writes about holy friendship: “It is not surprising if, despite being far apart, we are present to each other and, without being acquainted, know each other, because we are members of one body, we have one head, we are steeped in one grace, we live on one loaf, we walk on one road and we dwell in the same house” (Ep. VI, 2). Jesus said to his disciples: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you” (Jn. 15:13-14). Paulinus invites us to remember what true friendship is, life in Jesus Christ!

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