st. polycarp and us: my sermon at matins yesterday

“Fourscore and six years have I served Him, and he has done me no harm. How then can I curse my King that saved me.”

In the name of the + Father….

So spoke St. Polycarp to the men who arrested him and urged him to apostacize and save his life, according to a letter from the church at Smyrna. St. Polycarp bore witness to the gospel of our Lord and King by imitating the Savior’s total self-offering. The martyrology of St. Polycarp describes how his killers meant to burn him to death, but seeing that the flames would not consume him: “they commanded an executioner to go near and pierce him through with a dagger. And on his doing this, there came forth a dove, and a great quantity of blood, so that the fire was extinguished.” After St. Polycarp died, his body was pushed into the fire and burned. And when it was burned, according to the letter of the church at Smyrna, “we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.”

Stop and think about this for a moment: We here today, you and I, claim to be members of the same Body that gathered the precious bones of the holy Polycarp, we claim membership in the Catholic Church. The Lord has granted us to celebrate the anniversary of St. Polycarp’s martyrdom. And we, the living members of the Body, what is sometimes called the Church Militant, are those yet to walk in the steps of the holy martyrs; we are those for whom the commemoration of the death of St. Polycarp was meant to be “the exercising and the preparation” so that we might, when the time comes, bear witness to the gospel of our King who saved us.

Lent is perhaps the most appropriate time to consider our exercise and our preparation. This morning’s reading from Jeremiah reminds us of our call, as the Church: the firm but gentle call of the Bridegroom, our spouse, who loves us and submitted himself to death for us, a call which we repeatedly ignore. In the words of Jeremiah, we continually treat our whoredom lightly. Archbishop Michael Ramsey spoke of ancient Israel being summed-up or epitomized in the body of the crucified Messiah. He also spoke of the Church being born of the water and the blood, flowing from the side of Christ. There is therefore a sense in which Israel and the Church are one and the same thing, for both find their identity in the Body of Jesus. I take this as warrant for reading the prophecy of Jeremiah as directed at us, at the Church: “Return, O faithless children, says the LORD, for I am your master; I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion. I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.”

May we spend the rest of Lent contemplating our faithlessness as members of the Body. May we mark the injunctions from Holy Matrimony to mutual submission, and submit ourselves to Him who submitted Himself to death for us, and who calls us patiently to return to Him, confident in His promise that he will bring us even to Zion, to the presence of God, that at the end our witness may be counted with the witness of all the saints who have gone before us as more precious than the most exquisite jewels, more purified than gold, in union with the witness of the glory of God in the cross of our Lord, to whom be glory, honor, majesty, and an everlasting throne, from generation to generation. Amen.