After the Apostles

Praying for the successors of the apostles

11/23/2020

Revelation 14:1-3, 4b-5 I, John, looked and there was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of rushing water or a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. They were singing what seemed to be a new hymn before the throne, before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn this hymn except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been ransomed from the earth. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been ransomed as the first fruits of the human race for God and the Lamb. On their lips no deceit has been found; they are unblemished.

The older I get the more I appreciate history, especially the history of the Catholic Church. I must confess, though, that history was one of my worst subjects in school. Back then history seemed to me little more than a long list of mind-numbing dates and disasters, places and people, wars and rumors of wars. But now that I have over fifty years of my own history, I see its value and purpose. I have begun to see that history is not arbitrary or haphazard, but guided by God’s hand, that is, we can see God’s providence in history. We begin to discover God’s will writ large over the millennia. To care about history, therefore, is to care about God’s will, and to perceive his plans for our happiness. In other words, our happiness is the hidden meaning of history.

The history of the Catholic Church begins, of course, with Jesus Christ and his apostles. But do you ever wonder who came after the Apostles? The three most prominent people in Church history, who knew the apostles themselves, learned the faith from their lips, and became leaders of the Church after the Apostles were martyred were St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch and St. Polycarp of Smyrna. St. Clement learned the faith from Sts. Peter and Paul, and Sts. Ignatius and Polycarp took their catechism classes from St. John, the Beloved Disciple. These three saints – St. Clement, St. Ignatius, and St. Polycarp – are designated as “Apostolic Fathers” because they received the faith directly from the Apostles themselves.

Do you recall the “telephone game” that small children play? One person whispers a message to another, and then he passes it on to another, and so forth. The farther down the line you go, the less reliably the original message is transmitted. The Apostolic Fathers were the third in line to hear the Gospel whispered originally by Jesus and the Apostles.

Today is the feast of one of these three Apostolic Fathers, namely, St. Clement of Rome. St. Clement lived from 30 to 100 A.D. and being raised in imperial Rome heard the teaching of St. Peter and St. Paul. Both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome in the mid-60’s during the persecution of Emperor Nero. You will remember that Nero is the mad emperor who set fire to Rome in 64 A.D. and blamed the Christians, and then persecuted them. St. Paul mentions St. Clement in his letter to the Philippians. We read in Phil. 4:3: “They have struggled at my side in promoting the gospel, along with Clement, and my other coworkers, whose names are written in the book of life.”

According to tradition St. Peter consecrated Clement as bishop of Rome, and he was the third successor of Peter, after Linus and Cletus. Today, I will use Eucharistic Prayer One, or the Roman Canon, that mentions these original successors of St. Peter. Why do we mention these men and venerate them in Mass? Because they heard the original gospel message from the lips of Peter and Paul, James and John, in the long telephone game that has passed down the faith over 2,000 years to me and you. Catholics have a fancy name for the telephone game in the history of the Church, we call it “Sacred Tradition.” Sacred Tradition is nothing other than the gradual unfolding of God’s will century after century of human history, revealing his plans for our happiness. Studying history helps us see God’s plans for our happiness. That is what they are whispering in the Catholic telephone game.

St. Clement of Rome was the third successor of St. Peter. Pope Francis is St. Peter’s 256th successor, that is, he is pope number 266, if we include St. Peter. It is these men, the popes, the vicars of Christ, who have the special role and unique responsibility to hear the original whisper of Jesus in the telephone game of Church tradition, and pass it faithfully down to us. Let us pray that Pope Francis will listen carefully and then pass the message along accurately to the next Holy Father. That is why history is important: it is the telephone game that carries the secret to our happiness.

Praised be Jesus Christ!