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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
Today we celebrate Saint Ambrose. Saint Ambrose was not only a great thinker, theologian and bishop, but he was also the teacher of Saint Augustine, leading him to the faith.
Passing on the faith
Today we celebrate Saint Ambrose, Saint Ambrose of Milan. He was a doctor of the church. He was a bishop, but probably is a figure best known for the power of his evangelization because it was Saint Ambrose who spent much time with Saint Augustine to teach him about the faith.
In fact, we could say that without two aspects of the life of Saint Augustine, he probably would not have converted. One, and probably most important, the relentless prayers of his mother, Saint Monica. And I think she is the saint of the age for all of those people who raise adult children who don’t practice the faith, because she really understands the pain of something so important to her that was not embraced by her son, Augustine.
But then there’s Saint Ambrose, and Saint Ambrose could explain the faith in a clear and convincing way to Augustine. Ambrose was bright and brilliant, and he was the perfect person to have conversations of faith with Saint Augustine who was bright and brilliant. It should be something that gets us to think about what it is that we do in our lives.
Because this is one story of passing on the faith, but in many ways, the reason for our baptism is to pass on and share the faith. The readings today give us a little sense of what that means, and not easy. The prophet Isaiah gives us a phrase, trust in the Lord forever. We know that sometimes that’s easy to say, but when it comes to times when we actually have to trust in the Lord, perhaps in difficult times, in challenging times, it’s not always so easy to trust in the Lord.
Both Isaiah and the Gospel help us to understand that it’s not enough to say we trust in the Lord. We also have to actually trust in the Lord. And the way that we know we’re trusting in the Lord is if our lives are built on the foundation of our relationship with Jesus, if we participate in the sacraments, if we spend time praying with His word in Scripture, asking ourselves where it is that God is speaking directly to us, if we reflect on those encounters we have with other people, to ask ourselves where was Jesus in the midst of this conversation? How was Jesus trying to get my attention through this other person in my life?
Maybe hardest of all is when God speaks to us in ways we don’t like. Like when God wants to teach us something really important through someone with whom we absolutely disagree. Or when God really wants to help us to see something really critical to our faith, but it means that we have to change the way we do things. And yet the words of Isaiah remain, trust in the Lord forever. We pray as the disciples did to Jesus, Lord increase our faith.
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