St. Polycarp

This piece should have run in the current bulletin, but doesn't seem to have made it in:

St. Polycarp (†156) - Feb 23

Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna, now Izmir, Turkey, & a disciple of St. John the Apostle. Throughout his long life of preaching the Gospel & defending the Faith, he guided the expansion of the Church in its early days throughout the Asia Minor & the Near East.

His surviving correspondence, including a letter to the Philippians, is full of exhortations to keep the highest standards of moral living & to maintain the unity of the Faith in the face of threats within & without the Church. He interceded on behalf of the Eastern Churches before the Pope over the date of Easter. He resoundingly condemned heretics & schismatics, including Marcion, to whose face he famously called, “the first-born of Satan”.

The last disciple of the Apostles was martyred in a stadium in Smyrna at the age of 86.

Perhaps Christians today have grown a little too complacent of both divisions within in the Body of Christ & society’s pervasive immorality. St. Polycarp abhorred both & spent his life exhorting the faithful to both unity & holiness.

St. Polycarp, pray for us.