Today June 28

Today at last we can rejoice in a true hero both in writing and in person: St. Irenaeus, (second century). He was bishop of Lyons, that town of such great martyrs. On June 2, we celebrated the feast of St. Pothinus, the martyred bishop Irenaeus succeeded. Irenaeus was from Asia Minor and a disciple of St. Polycarp, who was taught by none other than St. John the Evangelist himself. He settled the dispute between East and West on the date of Easter and died a martyr (according to St. Gregory of Tours, anyway). That's about all we know about him personally, but his writings are such that they proclaim the man. They show him as idealistic, and non-dualistic (as opposed to the gnostics, who were his chief opponents). He had both feet firmly on the ground, he was a poet, he was eucharistic. he was famous for relating creation -- and specifically the production of bread and wine from their respective elements -- with the Eucharist, uniting it to the fact of our own death and resurrection. "What Irenaeus is saying is that in the Eucharist we see the world as God sees it, and that this vision involves, as we have seen, a reverence for the elements even in their natural state, since this is their potentiality to become the divine mysteries." - Angelus Book of the Saints. Irenaeus, the serene, would be a good saint for us in these dark days and could teach us respect for all life, including and especially life at its most vulnerable. St. Irenaeus, pray for us.