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One Bread, One Body

<< Tuesday, December 7, 2004 >>

St. Ambrose

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 96

Matthew 18:12-14

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ACCEPTABLE LOSSES?

“What is your thought on this...will he not leave the ninety-nine...and go in search of the stray?” —Matthew 18:12

In the Western business world, certain losses are expected. Damaged goods, breakage, stains, defects, bruising or spoilage, theft, or misplacement in transit are simply written off.

In God’s business, no loss is acceptable! “It is the will of Him Who sent Me that I should lose nothing of what He has given Me” (Jn 6:39; see also 17:12; 18:9).

Jesus, the Good Shepherd:

removes stains. He gave Himself up to present a holy and glorious Church “without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort” (Eph 5:25, 27),
heals the broken (Ps 147:3; Is 61:1),
protects the bruised (Is 42:3),
restores the damaged (Is 61:3),
seeks out the lost (Ez 34:12, 16), and
recovers what was stolen (see Jl 2:24-26; Is 49:25).

What is your assessment of the one missing sheep? How would you determine its worth? Like Jesus, would you hunt for a broken, dirty, and defective one to offer comfort and tenderness? (see Is 40:1-2) Is there anyone that you have “written off” as a loss? Perhaps this might be someone whose stain of sin is too repulsive, who has gone too far, who seems too broken to fix?

Jesus said, “ ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me?’ ‘Yes Lord,’ Peter said, ‘You know that I love You.’ Jesus replied, ‘Tend My sheep’ ” (see Jn 21:16). Do you love Jesus?

Prayer: “Change my heart, O God, may I be like You.”

Promise: “Like a shepherd He feeds His flock; in His arms He gathers the lambs, carrying them in His bosom, and leading the ewes with care.” —Is 40:11

Praise: St. Ambrose, a bishop of the early Church, guarded the flock by defending the laws and true teachings of the Church and by serving the poor.

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

December 7, 2004

St. Ambrose

(340?-397)

One of Ambrose’s biographers observed that at the Last Judgment people would still be divided between those who admired Ambrose and those who heartily disliked him. He emerges as the man of action who cut a furrow through the lives of his contemporaries. Even royal personages were numbered among those who were to suffer crushing divine punishments for standing in Ambrose’s way.

When the Empress Justina attempted to wrest two basilicas from Ambrose’s Catholics and give them to the Arians, he dared the eunuchs of the court to execute him. His own people rallied behind him in the face of imperial troops. In the midst of riots he both spurred and calmed his people with bewitching new hymns set to exciting Eastern melodies.

In his disputes with the Emperor Auxentius, he coined the principle: “The emperor is in the Church, not above the Church.” He publicly admonished Emperor Theodosius for the massacre of 7,000 innocent people. The emperor did public penance for his crime. This was Ambrose, the fighter, sent to Milan as Roman governor and chosen while yet a catechumen to be the people’s bishop.

There is yet another side of Ambrose—one which influenced Augustine, whom Ambrose converted. Ambrose was a passionate little man with a high forehead, a long melancholy face and great eyes. We can picture him as a frail figure clasping the codex of sacred Scripture. This was the Ambrose of aristocratic heritage and learning.

Augustine found the oratory of Ambrose less soothing and entertaining but far more learned than that of other contemporaries. Ambrose’s sermons were often modeled on Cicero and his ideas betrayed the influence of contemporary thinkers and philosophers. He had no scruples in borrowing at length from pagan authors. He gloried in the pulpit in his ability to parade his spoils—“gold of the Egyptians”—taken over from the pagan philosophers.

His sermons, his writings and his personal life reveal him as an otherworldly man involved in the great issues of his day. Humanity, for Ambrose, was, above all, spirit. In order to think rightly of God and the human soul, the closest thing to God, no material reality at all was to be dwelt upon. He was an enthusiastic champion of consecrated virginity.

The influence of Ambrose on Augustine will always be open for discussion. The Confessions reveal some manly, brusque encounters between Ambrose and Augustine, but there can be no doubt of Augustine’s profound esteem for the learned bishop.

Neither is there any doubt that Monica loved Ambrose as an angel of God who uprooted her son from his former ways and led him to his convictions about Christ. It was Ambrose, after all, who placed his hands on the shoulders of the naked Augustine as he descended into the baptismal fountain to put on Christ.

Comment:

Ambrose exemplifies for us the truly catholic character of Christianity. He is a man steeped in the learning, law and culture of the ancients and of his contemporaries. Yet, in the midst of active involvement in this world, this thought runs through Ambrose’s life and preaching: The hidden meaning of the Scriptures calls our spirit to rise to another world.

Quote:

“Women and men are not mistaken when they regard themselves as superior to mere bodily creatures and as more than mere particles of nature or nameless units in modern society. For by their power to know themselves in the depths of their being they rise above the entire universe of mere objects.... Endowed with wisdom, women and men are led through visible realities to those which are invisible” (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 14–15, Austin Flannery translation).