Earliest Ears

Learning about the faith from St. Irenaeus

06/28/2021

Matthew 8:18-22 When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other shore. A scribe approached and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus answered him, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” But Jesus answered him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.”

It is amazing the time we take to know certain famous people and can even quote them. For instance, Dc. Daniel and I discovered we love the same sort of movies and can quote lines from them and know who starred in them. That is what we really learn in seminary. Fr. John Connell has the uncanny gift of knowing the number one song for the past 50 or 60 years. You can tell him your birthday and he will tell you which song was number one on the charts the week you were born. Real Razorback fans can quote sports stats all day long until the Hogs come home. People know the 46 presidents of the United States from George Washington to Joe Biden, their order and their time in office.

How sad, therefore, that more Catholics do not know saints as well as they know Brittany Spears and Bubba Watson. Today I want to tell you a little about St. Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the early Church Fathers, and one to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for many modern Catholic beliefs and practices. We should know the lives of the saints and be able to quote them as well as we know and quote movie stars, rock bands, and sports figures.

St. Irenaeus was born in Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey, in 130 A.D., only 100 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He was actually ordained a bishop by St. Polycarp, who was the disciple of St. John, the Beloved Disciple, the one who leaned on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper. Do you remember the old telephone game little children play, where someone whispers in your ear, and you try to whisper the same thing to someone else, and they pass it on, etc.?

Well, Jesus whispered his heart-beat (his love) into St. John’s ear, who whispered it into St. Polycarp’s ear, who whispered it into St. Irenaeus’ ear. The earlier you hear the whisper, the more accurately you hear the message. The reason we should study St. Irenaeus is because he was one of the earliest ears to hear the Good News.

St. Irenaeus also helped develop the canon (the official list) of the New Testament, especially the four gospels. In the early Church, there were circulating a number of gospels, besides the ones we know today: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In his famous work, “Adversus Haereses” (Against the Heresies), Irenaeus wrote that there are only four true gospels and virtually ended the debate.

He argued: “For since there are four zones of the world in which we live and four principal winds, while the Church has been scattered throughout the world, and since the ‘pillar and ground’ of the Church is the gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing incorruption on every side.” In other words, we can thank St. Irenaeus for our standing at Mass when the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are proclaimed. We can trust what he teaches because his was one of the earliest ears to hear the whisper of the Good News.

A third practical point deserves mention about St. Irenaeus. He stressed that the best way to know you are following the true and orthodox Catholic faith is to be in union with Rome, and the successor of St. Peter, the pope. During the 2nd century, there was a wide-spread heresy called Gnosticism that was confusing countless Christians, and it may be confusing not a few Christians today. St. Irenaeus strongly urged his people to stay close to the pope in order to stay close to the true faith.

We need to hear and heed that message today, when many voices on social media claim to have the corner on Catholicism and why they are right and everyone else is wrong. Instead of tuning in to modern-day messengers, turn in to one of the earliest ears to hear the Good News. St. Irenaeus tells us to trust Pope Francis, if we want to be true Catholics.

Today, June 28th, we celebrate the feast of St. Irenaeus, the disciple of St. Polycarp, who was the disciple of St. John, who was the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ himself. Instead of quoting the latest tweet from Labron James or Tucker Carlson, maybe we should read and repeat something we find in the writings of St. Irenaeus. After all, his was one of the earliest ears to hear the whisper of the Good News.

Praised be Jesus Christ!