Clement of Rome, Bishop and Martyr

Today the Church commemorates Clement of Rome, who called a divided Church back to the love of Christ and shared the sufferings of his fellow Christians.

Clement belonged to the generation that had received the faith from the Apostles. He became Bishop of Rome after Linus and Cletus, who had followed Peter. Peter and Paul had suffered martyrdom, but the Church they had served continued to gather, to offer worship, and to care for the people Christ had called.

About the year 96, trouble reached Clement from Corinth. A few members of the Church there had driven faithful elders from their ministry. These were men who had served without reproach and led the community’s worship. Rivalry had broken the peace of a Church once known for its hospitality and care of others.

The Church at Rome had endured troubles of its own. Yet Clement wrote to Corinth in the name of that whole Church. He asked the Corinthians to remember what they had received together. Their gifts had once served their neighbors. Now jealousy had turned those gifts into weapons against one another.

He recalled the humility of Christ, who had come among human beings and suffered for them. The Lord’s blood had been given for the salvation of the world. Clement urged those who had quarreled to turn towards that mercy, confess their wrongdoing, and receive correction.

The elders they had expelled held a ministry entrusted to them by the Church. Christ had sent the Apostles, and the Apostles had preached the Gospel and appointed ministers for those who believed. They had also provided for others to continue the work after their deaths. Clement would not accept the removal of men who had served Christ’s people faithfully.

He called the Corinthians to recover the life of a body whose members needed one another. The strong were to care for the weak, and the rich to provide for the poor. A person’s learning was to become visible in good deeds. Even the smallest member had a place in the life of the whole.

Clement asked the leaders of the quarrel to yield rather than preserve their own standing at the cost of the Church’s peace. He spoke of Christians who had accepted chains to ransom others, and of those who had sold themselves into slavery to buy food for the hungry. Such love had learnt its shape from Christ, who had given himself for them.

The letter became a prayer for the sick, the hungry, the captive, and the faint-hearted. Clement sent trusted men to Corinth and asked that they return with news of reconciliation. His concern reached across the sea towards people whose discord had wounded the whole household of God.

According to a later tradition, Clement was sent into exile. The authorities sent him to the quarries of the Crimea, where many Christians labored under sentence. They carried their drinking water from miles away. Clement joined their hardship and gathered them to pray that God would give them water near at hand.

As he prayed, he saw a lamb standing on a rock and showing him where to strike. Clement recognized Christ. He took a small pickaxe and struck the place beneath the lamb’s foot. Water sprang out, and the prisoners had a spring beside their place of labor.

Clement continued to preach and baptize. When the Emperor’s officer came to suppress the growing Church, he seized Clement, bound an anchor about his neck, and cast him into the sea. Those whom Clement had served stood on the shore and prayed. The sea withdrew, and they found his body in a stone resting place beneath the waters.

Clement brought Christ’s mercy to the divided Church at Corinth and to prisoners in the quarries. The same Lord gathers us into his Church and gives us life in the Spirit.