Sunday, May 23, 2010

St. Irenaeus at Pentecost

This morning, praying today's "Office of Readings" (for Pentecost Sunday), I was deeply impressed by the following passage from St. Irenaeus' "Against Heresies":
If we are not be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God.  Since we have our accuser, we need an Advocate as well.  And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his woulds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.
 I guess I was most intrigued by the free use of mixed metaphors and parables.  No strictly literal interpretation of the the Bible here!  And this by a second century great Christian leader, the bishop of Lugdunum (love that name!) in Gaul, which is present-day Lyons in France, who was a disciple of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, present-day Izmir in Turkey on the other side of the Mediterranean, who was in turn a disciple of St. John the Evangelist.  To me it's fascinating to see how freely a writer, just a couple of generations removed from the apostles, makes use of the traditions of the Gospels.