THE FATHERS.
ORIGEN, CHAMPION OF ORTHODOXY (A.D. 253).
When a persecution was raging against the Christians about 206, Leonidas and his son Origen were among the suspected. Leonidas was beheaded. Origen, then aged seventeen, was also eager to meet the same fate, and he would have been beheaded also, but his mother privily in the night season conveyed away his clothes and his shirt. Whereupon, more for shame to be seen than for fear to die, he was constrained to remain at home. He was zealous, however, and wrote to his father, telling him not to change for his and his mother’s sake. Then Origen, to assist his mother and six brothers, kept a school, and afterwards was made a bishop. He was a great worker, lived sparingly, and went barefoot. He wrote as much as seven notaries and so many maids could pen every day. The number of his books was six thousand volumes. He encouraged and comforted all the martyrs, and was a redoubted champion of doctrines.
ST. AMBROSE, CHAMPION OF HIS ORDER (A.D. 397).
St. Ambrose, who died 397, was not only the great advocate and defender of the order of virginity, but he displayed a high sense of dignity in guarding the purity of his church. He refused to allow the Emperor Marcellus to enter the church because he was stained with the blood of Gratian. He also opposed the Empress Justina in her Arian tendencies. He was also the champion who opposed the orator Symmachus, who pleaded for retaining the old heathen idols in their old places of worship. When the Emperor Theodosius, in the fourth century, had ordered what most people considered a brutal massacre at Thessalonica of seven thousand persons as they were sitting in a circus to witness a race, and this by way of punishment for a previous riot in the city, all eyes were turned to the Bishop of Milan to avenge this outrage. When the Emperor reached the city some days later, the bishop avoided meeting him, but wrote a letter, in which he said: “So bloody a scene as that at Thessalonica is unheard of in the world’s history. I had warned and entreated you against it. You yourself recognised its atrocity. You endeavoured to recall your decree. And now I call on you to repent.” Soon after, when Ambrose came back to Milan, the Emperor, as usual, presented himself at the hour of service. Ambrose met him in the porch, and thus spoke: “It seems your majesty has not repented of the heinousness of your murder. Your imperial power has darkened your understanding, and stood between you and the recognition of your sin. Consider the dust from which you spring. How can you uplift in prayer the hands which still drip with innocent blood, or receive into such hands the body of the Lord! Depart; add not sin to sin. Find in repentance the means of mercy which can restore you to health of soul.” The Emperor humbled himself. For eight months as a penitent he abstained from presenting himself at Divine service. During the penance Theodosius bitterly complained that the Church of God was opened to slaves and beggars, but to him was closed, and with it the gates of heaven. He tried once to gain admittance, but Ambrose sternly refused until the Emperor promised to show openly his repentance by taking his place in the church among the penitents. The spirit displayed by Ambrose in this episode raised his reputation, and has left an example to all future bishops when contending against absolute power.
WHY ST. AMBROSE FELL ASLEEP AT MASS.
St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, died in 397, on the day which he himself had predicted. On that day Severinus, Bishop of Cologne, asked his archdeacon if he heard any sounds in the air. The latter stood erect and listened, and then answered, “I hear voices as of those singing in heaven, but what they may be I know not.” And Severinus was then informed that these were the songs of angels as they carried Martin up to heaven. At that same hour also the blessed Ambrose was celebrating Mass at Milan, and the custom was, that the reader should not begin to read till the bishop nodded to him. And when he would have begun standing before the altar, the blessed Ambrose fell asleep on the altar. Though many saw this, no man presumed to wake him, till after two or three hours had elapsed, when they spoke to him, saying, “The hour has passed by; let my lord the bishop command the lector to read, for the people are waiting and already are very weary.” And Ambrose bade them not be disturbed, for that his brother Martin had departed from the flesh, and he had just been attending his funeral. And greatly astonished, and noting the day and hour, they afterwards discovered that at that very time the blessed Martin had been buried at Tours, where the whole city and neighbourhood had followed him with hymns and tears to the grave.
SOME SAYINGS OF ST. AMBROSE.
It was related that an obstinate heretic who went to hear St. Ambrose preach, only to confute and mock him, beheld an angel visible at his side and prompting the words the saint uttered. On seeing this, the scoffer was self-convicted and became a convert. One day St. Ambrose, calling at the house of a Tuscan nobleman, was hospitably received, and began to inquire into the condition of his host, who replied, “I have never known adversity—every day has seen me increasing in fortune, in honours and possessions; I have a numerous family of sons and daughters, who have never caused me a moment of sorrow; I have a multitude of slaves, to whom my word is law; and I have never suffered either sickness or pain.” On hearing this, Ambrose rose suddenly from the table and said, “Let us make haste to quit this roof ere it fall upon us, for the Lord is not here!” And he had scarcely left the house when an earthquake shook the ground and swallowed up the palace and all its inhabitants. The church, the basilica of St. Ambrogio Maggiore at Milan, is one of the oldest and most interesting in Christendom, and was founded in 387. Though rebuilt and restored at least twice, it still retains the form of the primitive churches, with doors of cypress wood. On the front of the high altar, which is all of plates of gold enamelled with precious stones, are represented in relief scenes from the life of our Saviour.
ST. AMBROSE AND THE RELICS OF ST. GERVASIUS.