St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

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The June issue of St. Paul’s Epistle, our monthly newsletter, is available on line as a .PDF file readable with Abobe Reader by PC users and with Preview by Mac users.

Today’s news in the Episcopal Church – Episcopal Life Online.

About Today’s Commemoration:

Today is a feria on the Episcopal Church calendar, so we look back to Sunday when we skipped commemorating St. Irenaeus, Third Century Bishop of Lyons, because his feast was supplanted by the Lord’s Day. An article on Irenaeus at Prof. Glenn Davis’s The Development of the Canon of the New Testament website tells us:

Relatively little is known of the life of Irenaeus. As a boy he had, as he delighted to point out, listened to the sermons of the great bishop and martyr, Polycarp of Smyrna, who was regarded as a disciple of the apostles themselves. Here he came to know, ‘the genuine unadulterated gospel’, to which he remained faithful throughout his life. Perhaps he also accompanied Polycarp on his journey to Rome in connection with the controversy over the date of celebrating Easter (154 CE). Later he went as a missionary to southern Gaul, where he became a presbyter at Lyons. …

Irenaeus was absent from the city when the persecution there reached its zenith. It seems that he had been sent to Rome by the Gallican churches in order to confer with Pope Eleutherus, perhaps as a mediator in the Montanist disputes. Evidently Irenaeus stayed in Rome for just a short time, and soon after the end of the persecution we find him again in Lyons as the successor to Bishop Pothinus (178). When and how he died is unknown to us. Jerome and others state that he died as a martyr in the persecution under the Emperor Septimus Severus (202), but there is no certainty about this tradition.

In short, we know Irenaeus almost solely from his writings, and these have not been preserved in their entirety. (Read the entire article here.)

A prayer for today:

A prayer for commemorating St. Irenaeus is found in Lesser Feasts & Fasts – 2006:

Almighty God, you upheld your servant Irenaeus with strength to maintain the truth against every blast of vain doctrine: Keep us, we pray, steadfast in your true religion, that in constancy and peace we may walk in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.