In the Company of Heroes: St. Iranaeus of Lyon

Filled with fervor for the full faith handed down from the Apostles, Irenaeus vigorously defended it against the early aberrations of the Gnostics.

CHESAPEAKE,VA (Catholic Online) - Born in Asia Minor in 130 A.D., Irenaeus was educated in Smyrna where he learned the Christian faith from Polycarp. Polycarp was a friend of John, the beloved disciple, the author of the Gospel that bears his name.

He learned it from the One who proclaimed, lived, and--Himself--was the Good News--Jesus Christ. Polycarp sent his young disciple on a missionary journey to Lyons, France, to spread the same message of Love Incarnate.

He was later ordained to the priesthood under the Bishop of Lyons, St. Pothinus, and became one of the founders of the Church in that country. He succeeded Pothinus as Bishop in 178.

Filled with fervor for the full faith handed down from the Apostles, Irenaeus vigorously defended it against the early aberrations of the Gnostics,who warped the message into a hidden secret for only a few, and the Montanists who disdained the body and totally misunderstood the implications of the Word becoming flesh.

His most famous work, preserved to this day, is his "Treatise against Heresies". The arguments contained in this masterpiece are still being made by the Church he served as She faces contemporary efforts to undermine and obscure the full promise of the Christian faith--the total transformation of humanity in and through Jesus Christ.

This great defender of the faith insisted on the central claim of Christianity: God can be known and loved. He became fully human in the person of His Son, and through Jesus Christ, men and women can participate in the very inner life of the Trinity. In that participation we are transformed by grace.

Irenaeus wrote these words: "The glory of God gives life; those who see God receive life. For this reason, God--who cannot be grasped, comprehended, or seen--allows Himself to be seen, comprehended, and grasped by men, that He may give life to those who see and receive Him. It is impossible to live without life, and the actualization of life comes from participation in God, while participation in God is to see God and enjoy His goodness."

This marvelous truth reveals the heart of the meaning and implications of the Incarnation, the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Jesus Christ both fully reveals who God is to man, and who man is now able to become in God. The words of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, the latest ecumenical council of the same Catholic Church Irenaeus served with heroism underscore the profundity of this great truth in the most oft-quoted passage of the pontificate of the late Servant of God John Paul II:

"In reality, it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of Him who was to come, Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of His love, reveals man to himself and brings to light His most high calling" (Church in the Modern World, n. 22).

The men and women of Irenaeus' time had a difficult time grasping this profound truth. They still do in our own time. They can only be grasped by faith. Yet--against extraordinary opposition--he defended, embodied, and witnessed the truth they reveal; bearing as his final witness the shedding of His blood in the year 200 A.D.

Not only can all men and women know God, but all men and women were created to be transformed in Him through His Son. That message shook the world of the Apostolic age, and literally transformed it from within.

Do we believe that the same message will transform the world that Christians face in the Third Christian Millennium? The heart of the message has not changed. What is needed is messengers, who, like Irenaeus of Lyons, live it with heroic virtue.

The Gospel alone can melt and refashion the hardened hearts of the post modernist age in which we now live. To an age now seeking good news, we are called, as was Irenaeus, to proclaim it. That way the Incarnation will continue its transforming effects through the words we speak and the way we live our daily lives in the real world.

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