Voices and influences
Ambrose of Milan
A Roman governor drafted into a bishop's chair before he was even baptized, who made an emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.
Summary
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 397.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 271 of 908.
Ambrose of Milan
- Lived
- died 397
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 908 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Ambrose of Milan died in 397 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
Christ, then, is the beginning of our virtue. He is the beginning of purity, who taught maidens not to look for the embraces of humanity but to yield the purity of their bodies and minds to the service of the Holy Spirit rather than to…
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a husband. Christ is the beginning of frugality, for he became poor, though he was rich. Christ is the beginning of patience, for when he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he was struck, he did not strike back. Christ is the beginning of humility, for he took the form of a servant, though in the majesty of his power he was equal with God the Father. From him each various virtue has taken its origin.For this cause, then, that we might learn these different virtues, "a son was given us, whose beginning was upon his shoulder." That "beginning" is the Lord's cross—the beginning of strong courage, wherewith a way has been opened for the holy martyrs to enter the sufferings of the holy war.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Therefore, in order to call the Gentiles to the grace of his resurrection (for it is indeed a rich and fertile land that produces eternal fruits, fruits a hundred and sixty times over), he subjected his shoulder to work, subjecting himself to the cross, in…
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order to carry our sins. And so the Prophet says: His authority is on his shoulder (Isaiah 9:6), that is, the power of divinity over the bodily passion, or the cross surpassing the body. Therefore, he placed his shoulder on the plow, enduring all insults, subjected to labor in such a way that he was wounded because of our iniquities, and weakened because of our sins.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Accordingly, even at that time, the cross that was to come was prefigured in sign; and at the same time that he was stripped of his tunic, that is, of the flesh he took on, he was stripped of the handsome diversity of colors that…
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represented the virtues. Therefore his tunic, that is, his flesh, was stained with blood, but not his divinity; and his enemies were able to take from him his covering of flesh but not his immortal life.
Genesis 37:23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the robe of many colors he was wearing— BSB
Moses indeed killed the Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, in order to avoid the tyrant of that land.
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But he would not have killed that Egyptian man before he had first killed the Egyptian man of spiritual wickedness within himself, and had renounced the luxury of regal honors, considering the reproach of Christ a greater inheritance than the treasures of Egypt.
Exodus 2:12 After looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. BSB
A wish is a request for blessings from God with a promise to fulfill a duty. And so, when you obtain what you have asked for, it is ungrateful to delay the promise.
Deuteronomy 23:21 If you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not be slow to keep it, because He will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Ambrose was born about 339 at Trier, where his father served as praetorian prefect of Gaul — one of the four or five highest offices in the Western empire. The father died young and the family went back to Rome. Ambrose was trained in law and Greek, entered the imperial service, and by about 372 was governor of Aemilia and Liguria, with his seat at Milan. Milan was then the working capital of the West, where the emperor actually lived. In 374 the bishop of Milan died, and the city split. The Arian party and the Nicene party each packed the basilica, and it looked like a riot. The governor went in to keep order and make a speech about calm. Someone in the crowd — the tradition says a child — called out, Ambrose for bishop, and both sides took it up. He was thirty-five, a career administrator, and not baptized. He tried to get out of it. He was baptized, ordained through every clerical rank in eight days, and consecrated bishop on 7 December 374. He gave his land to the church and the rest of his money to the poor, hired a priest named Simplicianus to teach him theology, and started reading Greek Christian writers no one in the Latin West had absorbed yet — Origen, Basil, Athanasius. He learned the job in public, at speed. He turned out to be extraordinary at it. He preached every Sunday and taught the congregation to sing: antiphonal hymns, two sides of the church answering each other, an Eastern practice he planted in the West. Some of the hymns are his own and are still sung. Augustine, who heard him, says he wept at the singing and could not stop. He also decided that the church was not a department of the state, and he made it stick three times. In 385 and again in 386 the Empress Justina, an Arian, demanded that one of Milan's basilicas be handed over for Arian worship, with her son the boy-emperor Valentinian II behind the order. Ambrose refused. Imperial troops surrounded the church. He and the congregation stayed inside, day and night, and he taught them the hymns to keep their courage up through the siege. He sent back the line that made the position permanent: the emperor is within the church, not above it. The troops withdrew. He pressed the same claim in 388 over Callinicum, where a mob of Christians had burned a synagogue and Theodosius ordered the bishop to pay for rebuilding it — a just order, and Ambrose fought it until the emperor gave way. It is the ugliest episode in his record and should be named as what it is. Then came Thessalonica. In 390 a riot there killed the imperial garrison commander, and Theodosius answered by turning his soldiers loose on the crowd in the circus. Something like seven thousand people were killed in a few hours. Ambrose wrote him a private letter — it survives — telling him he could not celebrate the Eucharist in his presence until he repented publicly, and that David had been a great king and still said, I have sinned. When the emperor came to the church in Milan, the bishop met him at the door and did not let him in. Theodosius, master of the Roman world, took off his imperial robes, stood among the penitents for months, and was readmitted at Christmas. No one had seen anything like it. It set a precedent the West lived under for a thousand years: there is a bar the state does not cross, and someone will be standing at the door. His other lasting work was quieter. He wrote On the Duties of the Clergy, a Christian answer to Cicero's book on duty, and treatises on the Holy Spirit and on the sacraments that carried Greek theology into Latin. And he preached the sermons that a rhetoric professor named Augustine came to hear for the technique. Ambrose showed him how to read the Old Testament without stumbling over its surface, took his confession, and baptized him at Easter 387. He kept his door open, ate almost nothing, and worked past exhaustion. He died on Good Friday, 4 April 397, and Milan filled with people who had watched a governor become a shepherd. Sources: Paulinus of Milan, Life of Saint Ambrose; Ambrose, Letters (including Letter 51 to Theodosius); Augustine, Confessions, books 5–9; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 10.
908 quotations across 50 books
Where this voice is quoted
Then Mary took about a pint of expensive perfume, made of pure nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair.
“In loving this body, that is, the church, bring water for his feet and kiss his feet, not only pardoning those who have become enmeshed in sin but by your peace giving them harmony and putting them at peace.”
“Why wasn’t this perfume sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”
“O traitor Judas, you value the ointment of his passion at three hundred pence, and you sell his passion at thirty pence. Rich in valuing, cheap in wickedness!”
Judas did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.
“[Judas] was chosen among the twelve apostles and had charge of the money bag, to distribute it among the poor, so that it might not seem as though he had betrayed the Lord because he was not honored or in want.”
So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well,
“In the presence of such grace given by the Lord, of such a miracle of divine bounty, when all ought to have rejoiced, the wicked were stirred up and gathered a council against Christ and wished moreover to kill Lazarus also.”
The crowd standing there heard it and said that it had thundered. Others said that an angel had spoken to Him.
“How does God speak? Does He have a physical voice? Not at all, but He pours forth oracles with a certain superior power than a physical voice could have. The prophets heard this voice; the faithful hear this voice, but the wicked do not understand.”
Then Jesus told them, “For a little while longer, the Light will be among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you.
“For in that servant form was the fullness of true light: and when he emptied himself, he was the light. Finally, he said: Walk while you have the light (John 12:35). And when he was in death, he was not in the shadow.”
Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in Me does not believe in Me alone, but in the One who sent Me.
“The one who confesses the Father believes on the Son. For the one who does not know the Son does not know the Father.”
As for anyone who hears My words and does not keep them, I do not judge him.
“He judges not, and do you judge? He says that "whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness," that is, that if he is in darkness he may not remain that way but may amend his error, correct his fault and keep my commandments.”
After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel that was around Him.
“Let us come now to the Gospel of God. I find the Lord stripping Himself of His garments, and girding Himself with a towel, pouring water into a basin, and washing the disciples' feet.”
He came to Simon Peter, who asked Him, “Lord, are You going to wash my feet?”
“You ascended from the fountain, what followed? You heard the reading. The high priest, though the presbyters also do it, nevertheless the beginning of the ministry is from the high priest. The high priest, I say, washed your feet. What is this mystery?”
Jesus told him, “Whoever has already bathed needs only to wash his feet, and he will be completely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.”
“The Lord responded to him, because he said hand and head: The one who has washed does not need to wash again, except to wash only the feet (Ibid., 10). Why is this? Because in baptism all sin is washed away.”
So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.
“I, then, wish also myself to wash the feet of my brethren, I wish to fulfil the commandment of my Lord, I will not be ashamed in myself, nor disdain what He Himself did first.”
Jesus replied, “Philip, I have been with you all this time, and still you do not know Me? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father.
“In the church, I know of only one image, that is, the image of the unseen God. God has said about this image, "Let us make man [humankind] in our image."”
Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I am doing.
“Skillfully inserting here the word also, he has allowed us similarity and yet has not ascribed natural unity. The work of the Father and the work of the Son, therefore, are one.”
And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
“But if we think it impious to believe that the Father has handed over all judgment to the Son in such a way that he does not have it himself—for he has it and cannot lose what the divine majesty has by its very nature—we…”
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.
“Rightly therefore in the creation of the world the heaven is both first and last, wherein is that which is beyond heaven, even the God of heaven.”
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you.
“For he who came in the name of the Son surely also came in the name of the Father, for the name of the Father and of the Son is one.”
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.
“For it belongs to the perfect not to be easily moved by worldly matters, not to be disturbed by fear, not to be agitated by suspicion, not to be shaken by terror, not to be harassed by sorrow: but rather, to calm the unchanging mind…”
But I do exactly what the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Get up! Let us go on from here.
“Let us withdraw from the bond of the body and leave everything earthly so that when the adversary comes he may find nothing of his in us.”
When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father—He will testify about Me.
“So the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and bears witness of the Son. A witness, both faithful and true, bears witness also of the Father.”
However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.
“The Son of God says concerning the Holy Spirit that "he will not speak from himself," that is, not without the participation of the Father and myself.”
For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth.
“Let us pay attention to the distinction of the Godhead from the flesh. In each there speaks one and the same Son of God, for each nature is present in him.”
I in them and You in Me—that they may be perfectly united, so that the world may know that You sent Me and have loved them just as You have…
“There are some … who in their desire to deny the unity of the divine substance try to make light of the love of the Father and the Son, because it is written, "You have loved them, as you have loved me."”
Because it was cold, the servants and officers were standing around a charcoal fire they had made to keep warm. And Peter was also standing with them, warming himself.
“Let us also consider in what state he denied. "It was cold," he says. If we consider the temperature, it could not have been cold: but it was cold where Jesus was not recognized, where there was no one to see the light, where the…”
If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.”
“They affirm that they are showing great reverence for God, to whom alone they reserve the power of forgiving sins. But in truth no one does him greater injury than those who choose to prune his commandments and reject the office entrusted to them.”