Today, we celebrate St Irenaeus, the second bishop of Lyon, France. Irenaeus is considered to be one of the most important theologians of the 2nd century, a time before our faith was a recognized religion in the Roman empire, a time when theologians were debating and hammering out a lot of the basics about what we believe about Jesus and about our faith. Much of what Irenaeus wrote was against Gnosticism, a popular philosophy in the ancient world that saw different levels of divinity as being present instead of one, unified God, a philosophy that separated the created world into the superior spirit and the inferior material objects. Irenaeus did a great deal to develop orthodox teachings within our faith, to develop those fundamental beliefs that we so often take for granted today.
We hear the familiar story of the healing of the leper in today’s Gospel. The faith of the leper always strikes me. He has confidence in Jesus’ power to heal him. I think of the confidence that St Ireneaus and the early Church fathers had in their faith. May they be an inspiration to us.
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