Resultados18 letters/passages
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.02
I believed that gods of wood and metal could protect me. Experience has taught me otherwise. Hannibal came to my gates despite all the rites I performed. The Gauls seized the Capitol while the geese screamed and the priests chanted. My gods did not save me then. It was Roman courage that saved me — not Roman religion." …
ambrose_milan · c. 381 · score 0.02
To my sister, dearer to me than my eyes and life. Since you ask anxiously in every letter about the church here, let me tell you what is happening. The day after I received your letter — in which you said your dreams were troubling you — the pressure of heavy troubles began. This time it was not the Portian basilica ou …
ambrose_milan · c. 386 · score 0.02
To my sister, dearer to me than eyes and life. Since you ask anxiously in every letter about the state of the church here, let me tell you what is happening. The day after I received your letter — in which you mentioned that your dreams were troubling you — a storm of heavy troubles began. This time it was not the Port …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.02
Ambrose to his most beloved sister Marcellina — greetings. You will have heard reports of what has happened here, and I want you to have the truth from me directly, not from rumor. The court demanded that I hand over the Portian Basilica [a church outside the walls of Milan] for the use of the Arians. I refused. They t …
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.02
But Rome's greatness was built by her soldiers, not her priests. Regulus did not consult the augurs before marching to Carthage. Scipio did not sacrifice to Victory before destroying it. The battles that made Rome were won by Roman arms, not Roman altars. And the rites that Symmachus defends — the very rites he claims …
ambrose_milan · c. 381 · score 0.02
But when they arrived and found the people assembled in prayer, they joined the congregation. When word reached us that the soldiers had come over, the joy was tremendous. It was Easter, and the troops sent to enforce the emperor's will had defected to Christ. I preached. I compared our situation to Job's trials — espe …
ambrose_milan · c. 386 · score 0.01
I pointed out that even Job's greatest trial came not from his enemies but from his own wife, who told him to curse God and die [Job 2:9]. Women, I said, are often the instrument through which the devil attacks — Eve in the garden, Jezebel against Elijah, Herodias against John the Baptist. And now the empress mother Ju …
ambrose_milan · c. 380 · score 0.01
Ambrose, Bishop, to the most blessed prince and most gracious Emperor Valentinian. Since the illustrious Symmachus, Prefect of the City, has petitioned your Grace to restore the altar removed from the Roman Senate house, and since you, Emperor — young in years but a veteran in faith — rejected the prayer of the pagans, …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to the faithful. Helena, mother of Constantine, went to Jerusalem and found the cross [according to the tradition that Ambrose helped popularize in the West, Helena identified the True Cross among three crosses excavated at Golgotha through a miracle — the true cross healed a dying woman]. This was not mere arc …
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. 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. 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 to his sister Marcellina. You wanted to know how the feast of Saint Agnes went. I can tell you — it went better than I expected, and not in the way I planned. I preached on Agnes herself — how this girl, barely twelve years old, faced the executioner with a composure that veterans of the arena could not match. …
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 Romulus — greetings. You have asked about the status of widows in the Church, and your question comes at a good time, because the matter is often misunderstood. The widow who chooses not to remarry and devotes herself to prayer, fasting, and good works occupies an honored place in the Church (1 Timothy 5:3-1 …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to his most dear sister Marcellina — greetings. Today marks another anniversary of your consecration, and I cannot let it pass without writing to you. You have now lived the consecrated life for longer than most people have lived at all, and the grace of that vocation has only deepened with time. When we were c …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to his most dear sister Marcellina — greetings. You ask me to write down what I have been preaching about virginity, and since you are the one person whose example gives me the right to speak on the subject, I comply. I know that this teaching offends many — especially the mothers of Milan, who suspect I am dis …
ambrose_milan · c. 385 · score 0.01
Ambrose to Horontianus — greetings in the Lord. Isaac is the child of promise, and his life teaches us about the soul that waits on God. Consider his birth: it was impossible by nature. Sarah was old and barren, and Abraham was beyond the age of fatherhood. Yet God had spoken, and what God speaks comes to pass. Isaac's …