Homily for the Memorial of St. Ambrose
Dec.
7, 2024
Collect
Day
of Recollection
for the Volunteers of the Missionaries of Charity, Bronx
St. Ambrose Confronts Emperor Theodosius
(St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, Green Bay)
In the
collect, we prayed that God would “raise up in [his] Church men after [his] own
heart to govern her with courage and wisdom.”
The prayer, and the whole Church, holds up St. Ambrose as such a
leader: “a teacher of the Catholic faith
and a model of apostolic courage.”
Ambrose
became bishop of Milan in December 374, almost by accident. With the eyes of faith, we have to say it
wasn’t an accident but a work of Providence.
Ambrose
belonged to a noble Roman family and, like his father, was trained for civil
service. In his early 30s he became
governor of the large province that covered northern Italy, centered on Milan,
which at that time also was the capital of the western half of the Roman
Empire. He was still a catechumen, an
unbaptized believer. That was a fairly
common practice in those days.
For most
of the 4th century, the Church was grievously split between orthodox believers
and Arian heretics, who denied that Christ was actually God, in spite of what
the Council of Nicea taught—the council that gave us the Nicene Creed that we
profess every Sunday.
The
Milanese Church had been governed by an Arian bishop. When he died, the faithful assembled to elect
a new bishop, as was the practice in the early Church. It was a contentious assembly with the
faithful divided between Arians and orthodox believers. Ambrose finally showed up to keep the peace;
and suddenly, someone shouted, “Ambrose for bishop!” The crowd joined the acclamation, and against
his will the governor was compelled to accept.
Within a week he was baptized, confirmed, ordained to the minor orders,
and finally on Dec. 7 consecrated bishop.
Ambrose immediately
undertook serious study of the sacred Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church,
such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyprian of
Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, absorbing their teaching so as to pass
it on faithfully. He worked to restore
unity in the Church, opposing any concessions to the Arians and insisting on
the true doctrine taught by the Scriptures and the Fathers. He wrote quite a few treatises on Christian
faith and morality (which you can find in the CUA’s published collection of the
Fathers of the Church), but his primary means of teaching was by preaching and
composing hymns. Some of his hymns are
still used in the Liturgy of the Hours.
He also established a way of celebrating the Eucharist that took his
name, the Ambrosian liturgy, which is still practiced in Milan, a variation of
the Roman rite that we’re familiar with.
His
homilies, based solidly on the Bible, were so direct, simple, but skillful that
a young pagan teacher of rhetoric from North Africa who had come to the
imperial capital in 384 to try to make his name as a teacher used to go to hear
Ambrose preach. He hoped to pick up a
trick or 2 for his classroom. He intended
to pay attention only to Ambrose’s style, not to his message—none of his Jesus
or Christian stuff. His name was Aurelius
Augustinus, and in spite of himself the Christian message so effectively
preached by Bishop Ambrose sank into his mind and his heart. As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the
message.”
Ambrose’s
home was always open to the poor who were in need and to troubled souls. So Augustine went to talk with him. Later he wrote in his Confessions (which
is addressed to God), “I began to love him, of course, not at the first as a
teacher of the truth, for I had entirely despaired of finding that in thy
Church—but as a friendly man. . . . That
man of God received me as a father would, and welcomed my coming as a good
bishop should.”[1]
Ambrose baptized Augustine in 386, and Augustine soon returned to North Africa,
was ordained a priest, then chosen bishop of Hippo, and became the greatest
theologian of the Church until at least Thomas Aquinas.
Thus
Ambrose shows us the value of a warm personal style and of a simple and direct
writing or preaching style. Christianity
must be attractive! That was the premise
of Bp. Fulton Sheen decades ago, whose TV program Life Is Worth Living ran
in prime time for 5 years and won an Emmy in 1953. It’s the premise now of Bp. Robert Barron, a
firm believer and practitioner of presenting the Christian message in the light
of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Yesterday’s Vatican News included an interview with a philosopher of
religion about the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral; the interviewer and the
philosopher concurred that Notre Dame evangelizes thru beauty.[2]
I would
go on too long if I were to detail St. Ambrose’s apostolic courage in standing
up to the Roman emperors in matters of both faith and morality. (Pope Francis tells us never to go over 10
minutes.) Ambrose challenged emperors on
several occasions, reminding them that they were “in the Church, not over
it,” and excommunicating one emperor and forcing his repentance for ordering a
massacre of civilians. This was
apostolic courage of the kind that we pray our bishops might possess—and that
we, too, need in our personal lives as we try to live the Gospel in our
families, our workplaces, in our use of media, and in our encounters with the
poor, the sick, and everyone else.
