Saint Ambrose, Bishop and Doctor of the Church



     During the 300s AD, there was a very articulate heretic from Alexandria, Egypt.  He came to have a wide, international following, both within and outside the Church.  His heresy almost destroyed the apostolic Gospel handed down to us from Jesus himself.  That man was named Arius, and his heresy came to be known as Arianism.  All heresies are destructive, but this was being spread by one of the most influential priests of his generation. Arianism virtually erupted throughout the Church.


     Arius did not believe that Jesus Christ was God.  He held that Jesus was the highest of all the beings that God has created.  Jesus was the high-point, the pinnacle, of God's work.  


     Sounds okay at first perhaps, but it's wrong and it had terrible consequences.  If Jesus is a part of creation, even if he's its high-point--if he is created by God--then he is not God.  He isn’t the eternal Word that St. John's Gospel introduces us to, who was "with God and was God."  By contrast, Arius said, “There was a time when he was not.”


     St. Ambrose, whose Memorial we celebrate today, stepped up to the danger with wisdom, strength, and a profound loyalty to Jesus.  He held that, if Arius is right, then two conclusions follow: Jesus lied about who he is, and our salvation itself is lost (and our salvation is the very thing that Jesus came to die for!).  If Jesus isn’t the source of, and outside of, creation, then he could die to save someone only as you or I could:  I can be, say, a firefighter who gives his life to rescue someone else’s life.  But I cannot die to take away that person's sin, let alone die to take away the sin of the world.  Only the creator of creation could do that.  So St. Ambrose’s position, and the position of the orthodox Church is that Jesus Christ must be God; otherwise he and Scripture would have been lying about who he is, and he would be unable to take away your or my sin.  


     St. Ambrose promoted our deepest gratitude to the real Son of God, who is true God and true Man.  He spoke for the profound importance of our handing down, without change, the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, taught to us since the Apostles.


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     There was a young man who lived and worked in Milan, Italy, where Bishop Ambrose’s cathedral was. This young man was a devotee of another then-popular religion called Manicheism.  Yet he was drawn to Ambrose’s wonderful homilies.  Because of these homilies, and because of the young man’s mother’s Christian prayers over the years, he finally converted, and was baptized by St. Ambrose.  We today know the young man as St. Augustine, who, together with St. Thomas Aquinas, are remembered as the two most influential post-biblical saints in all the history of the Church.   


     St. Ambrose, pray for us! 

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