Saint Irenaeus of Lyon

Irenaeus was born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor, around 122, into a family that was already Christian. He had a stroke of luck few people had: as a boy he listened to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who according to tradition had been a disciple of the apostle John. He tells it himself in a letter, recalling that he still knew where Polycarp used to sit and how he spoke. Only two links separate Irenaeus from the Gospel. He became bishop of Lyon in 177, after his predecessor Pothinus had been killed along with forty-seven martyrs under Marcus Aurelius. He was sent to Rome by Pope Eleutherius on matters of doctrine, and when Pope Victor threatened to excommunicate the Churches of Asia because they celebrated Easter on a different day, Irenaeus wrote to tell him to let it go: a difference in the calendar, he argued, had never broken communion before. His name means “peaceful,” and he earned it. His main work is the Adversus haereses, against the Gnostic doctrines. To refute them he described them at length, and in doing so he preserved almost everything we know about those movements. The line he is most often quoted for is just one: the glory of God is man fully alive. He died in Lyon in 202. Francis proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 2022, with the title Doctor of Unity. If your name is Ireneo, today is your name day.