Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Chair of Peter, the Apostle, honoring Peter and the first Pope and the Chair that has been occupied by the successor Bishops of Rome. Today, our saint is another of the great leaders of the Early Church - St Polycarp. He was Bishop of Smyrna in modern-day Turkey. Tradition has it that Polycarp was converted to Christianity by St John the Evangelist. Polycarp was a good friend of St Ignatius of Antioch, another Father of the Early Church. Both of them were important links between the Apostles and the patristic era of the Early Church. Polycarp was a great defender of the faith against heresies. He was burned at the stake with 12 of his companions after he was arrested by the Roman authorities in the middle of the 2nd century. Today, in our modern American Church, we have Church leaders like Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bishop Robert Barron and Father James Martin who give us practical advice on how to live out our lives of discipleship in the modern world. The Jewish people received a lot of sage advice from the wisdom literature in their Holy Scriptures, and Church leaders like Polycarp offered advice to the followers in the Early Church as well. “Let us therefore forsake the vanity of the crowd and their false teachings, and turn back to the word delivered to us from the beginning” is one such type of advice that Polycarp gave. Sirach advises us today about the dangers of allowing money control our lives and allowing our money and power to manipulate others. Sirach also advises against giving ourselves over to the pleasures of the heart, forsaking our faith and God’s laws and commandments in the process. I find it so interesting how teachings from the Early Church and before the time of Christ still speak of truths that seem so relevant and timely in our modern world, like they were written by some of our Church leaders today. Yes, I guess that even though the world changes, human nature does not change very much, does it?
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