Monday in the Week of the Second Sunday of Advent
Ambrose of Milan, Bishop and Theologian
397
Today the Church commemorates Ambrose of Milan, bishop and theologian, who was taken from imperial government into the episcopate and learned to use the authority of the Church to teach the faith, defend the poor, and call rulers themselves to repentance.
Ambrose was born about the year 340 into a Christian family of high rank in the Roman Empire. Trained in rhetoric and law, he entered public service and became governor of the province that included Milan, then one of the chief cities of the western Empire. He was respected as an administrator and judge.
When the bishop of Milan died, the city was sharply divided between Christians who confessed the Nicene faith and those who followed the theology associated with Arius. Ambrose went to the church to keep order during the election of a successor. In the middle of the dispute, a voice cried out for Ambrose himself to become bishop, and the crowd took up the demand.
There was an obvious difficulty: Ambrose was still a catechumen and had not yet been baptized. He resisted the election, but the people and the imperial authorities would not release him from it. He was baptized, passed rapidly through the orders of ministry, and was consecrated bishop. The governor who had enforced imperial law now had to learn the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the pastoral care of souls.
Ambrose gave himself seriously to that conversion of life. He studied under the priest Simplicianus, immersed himself in Greek Christian theology, gave away much of his wealth, and opened his life to the demands of the poor. His preaching helped make Nicene theology intelligible in the Latin-speaking West.
His episcopate repeatedly brought him into conflict with the imperial court. When the court of the young Valentinian II demanded a basilica in Milan for Christians opposed to the Nicene settlement, Ambrose refused to surrender the church. Soldiers surrounded the basilica while Ambrose remained inside with his people. The congregation prayed and sang. Ambrose taught them hymns, some of which he had composed, and the imperial pressure eventually receded. His use of congregational hymnody helped shape the worship of the Western Church.
Among those who listened to Ambrose preach was Augustine of Hippo. Augustine had come to Milan intellectually restless and religiously divided. Ambrose’s preaching helped loosen Augustine’s objections to Christian faith, and after Augustine’s conversion Ambrose baptized him at Easter in 387. The two men were very different, but through Ambrose one of the greatest teachers of the Western Church received the sacrament that joined him to Christ.
Ambrose preached against the greed of landowners who drove the poor from their fields. In his exposition of Naboth’s vineyard, he challenged those who already possessed much but still coveted the small holdings of their neighbors. He also broke up sacred church vessels to ransom captives. When criticized for doing so, he insisted that the Church’s treasure should serve people in need.
In 388, Christians burned a synagogue at Callinicum on the Euphrates. Emperor Theodosius ordered restitution and punishment. Ambrose opposed requiring the local bishop to finance the rebuilding and pressed the emperor against enforcing penalties on the offenders. In his letters to Theodosius, he defended the Christian perpetrators and spoke with hostility of Jewish worship.
Two years later, Theodosius ordered a brutal reprisal at Thessalonica after the killing of an imperial official. Troops massacred civilians gathered in the circus. Ambrose urged Theodosius to repent. The bishop wrote that he could not celebrate the Eucharist in the emperor’s presence. Theodosius eventually performed public penance before returning to Communion. The scene became one of the enduring images of a bishop insisting that political power remains answerable to the judgment of God.
Ambrose died in 397. His body was buried in the basilica at Milan beside the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius, whose relics he had helped recover. His theology, hymns, preaching, and pastoral example continued to shape Latin Christianity long after his death.
With Ambrose, we ask for courage purified by mercy and for grace to exercise authority in humility before Christ, whose judgment we too must receive.
Let us pray
O God, who gave your servant Ambrose grace eloquently to proclaim your righteousness in the great congregation and fearlessly to bear reproach for the honor of your Name: Mercifully grant to all bishops and pastors such excellence in preaching and faithfulness in ministering your Word, that your people may be partakers with them of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.