Resultados25 letters/passages
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful — on the death of the Emperor Theodosius. Forty days have passed since the death of the Emperor Theodosius [following the biblical pattern of forty-day mourning periods], and it is time to speak what is in our hearts. We have lost the last great emperor. I say this knowing that his sons …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose to the faithful. The Emperor Gratian is dead, murdered by the treachery of men who owed him loyalty [Gratian was betrayed by his own troops, who defected to Magnus Maximus, a rival general proclaimed emperor in Britain]. He was twenty-four years old. I mourn him not only as a subject mourns his emperor but as a …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful of Milan — on the death of the Emperor Valentinian. The Emperor Valentinian II is dead [found dead at Vienne in Gaul in May 392, officially by suicide; many suspected he was murdered by order of the Frankish general Arbogast]. He was twenty years old. Twenty years — and in that brief sp …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose to the faithful. The Emperor Julian [Julian "the Apostate," 361-363, who attempted to reverse the Christianization of the empire] tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. He failed. Fires erupted from the foundations. Workers were killed. The project was abandoned. This was not an accident. It was a sign. God …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
… nto a bridle for his horse [a tradition that the nail was incorporated into the imperial diadem or horse's bridle]. This is rich in meaning: the instrument of Christ's humiliation became the instrument of imperial authority. The nail that pinned God to the wood now guided the horse of the Christian emperor. Power submi …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful of Milan. I have spoken often from the pulpit about the duties of those who serve at the altar. Let me now set down in writing what I have been teaching, so that it may be preserved and consulted. The foundation of all ministerial conduct is this: we serve not ourselves but God, and thr …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
The clerical life and the monastic life are not the same, though they share much. A good monk is not automatically a good bishop, any more than a good soldier is automatically a good general. The skills are different. But the foundation — discipline, prayer, self-denial, obedience — must be the same. Do not choose a ma …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. I return to the subject of penance because the Novatianists return to their attacks. They say the Church is too lenient; I say they are too cruel. Between us lies the truth of the gospel. Christ gave the keys to Peter: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" (Matthew 16:19). Those …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful of Milan. "Naboth had a vineyard beside the palace of Ahab, king of Samaria" (1 Kings 21:1). That sentence is the beginning of one of the most instructive stories in Scripture — instructive because the story never stops happening. Ahab wanted what was not his. He offered to buy it. Nabo …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. "The earth belongs to the Lord, and everything in it" (Psalm 24:1). Not to you. Not to any landlord. To God. And God created it for all, not for some. When the rich man hoards grain while the poor starve, he is not exercising his property rights — he is committing theft. Yes, theft. For what yo …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful of Milan. I am dying. You have known this for some time, and so have I. The illnesses that have been my companions for years are now making their final claim, and I have no strength left to resist them. I do not write this to inspire pity. I have had a life that would exhaust ten men, a …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
They dress like monks but live like libertines. They affect holiness in public and pursue indulgence in private. They have drawn others after them into the same ruin. I say plainly: a man who abandons the monastic life for the world has not found freedom; he has found a different kind of slavery. The flesh he thought h …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. You live in a city that sits at the crossroads of the empire, and every idea — good and bad — passes through Milan. It is therefore necessary that you know what the Church teaches, so that you can recognize what it does not. We teach that God is one in substance and three in persons: Father, So …
ambrose_milan · c. 397 · score 0.01
Ambrose, a servant of Christ, called to be a bishop, to the church of Vercellae and to all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: grace be fulfilled in you from God the Father and his only-begotten Son, in the Holy Spirit. I am spent with grief that the church of God among you is still without a bishop, and tha …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. There are those who say the Church has no power to forgive sins committed after baptism. They are called Novatianists [followers of Novatian, a third-century Roman priest who founded a rigorist schism], and their position, though it appears strict and holy, is in fact a denial of the g …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. Consider the widow of Zarephath. She had nothing — one handful of flour and a small amount of oil. She was gathering sticks to prepare a last meal for herself and her son, and then they would lie down to die of starvation (1 Kings 17:12). Into this extremity walked Elijah, and he asked for food …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful at Milan. The season of fasting is upon us [Lent, the forty-day period of penance before Easter], and I commend to you the example of Elijah, who fasted forty days in the wilderness and was sustained by God alone (1 Kings 19:8). Fasting is not starvation. It is not punishment. It is dis …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the clergy and people of Vercelli — greetings in the Lord. Brothers and sisters, I am distressed to learn that the peace I hoped for in your church has been shattered again. The election of a new bishop should be a source of joy; instead, it has become a cause of scandal. Let me speak bluntly. Both factions …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. The pagans call death the supreme evil. The Epicureans [followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus] say it is the end of everything. The Stoics say it should be faced with indifference. None of them is right. Death is not the supreme evil — sin is. Death is the consequence of sin, but …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. David is Scripture's great case study in the coexistence of greatness and sin. He was the man after God's own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), and he was an adulterer and a murderer. Both are true. Neither cancels the other. He saw Bathsheba and he wanted her. He took her. When her husband Uria …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful" (Psalm 1:1). Notice the progression: walk, stand, sit. Sin begins with movement — you walk past the wrong company. It continues with hesitation — you stand a …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. "Do not fret because of evildoers; do not envy those who do wrong. For like the grass they will soon wither; like green plants they will soon die away" (Psalm 37:1-2). I know why this psalm was written: because God's people have always been tempted to look at the wicked and say, "Why do they pr …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. The mystery of the Trinity is the foundation of everything we believe, and I want to set it out as clearly as I can. We confess one God in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not three Gods — that is polytheism. Not one person appearing in three modes — that is the heresy of S …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the faithful. Tobit was a righteous man living in exile, and his story teaches us what righteousness looks like under pressure. He buried the dead when it was illegal to do so (Tobit 1:17-18). He fed the hungry from his own table. He maintained his faith in a foreign land surrounded by those who had …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose, continuing his discourse on the death of his brother Satyrus. I have wept for my brother, and I do not regret it. But now I owe you — and myself — something more than tears. I owe you the reason for our hope. The pagans mock us: "You say you believe in life after death, yet you weep at funerals like everyone e …