Many early Christians were devoured by beasts

By Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo

The Church of the early Christians never considered itself a mere association of individuals. From the outset, they understood that they were intended to build up the kingdom of God on earth.

For many, this expression, so abundantly repeated in the Our Father, has lost the original connotations which Jesus attributed to it, that the man who accepts the teaching of Christ is the one who undertakes to build this kingdom, which ultimately will be the realization of the will of God on earth as it is realized in heaven.

The successor of St. Peter, Pope Benedict XVI, after 2000 years, emphasizes the same concept: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life to a new horizon and a decisive direction. Love is charity. Look to the Good Samaritan for how to live. Look to St. Martin of Tours, giving his cloak to a beggar."

Christian liturgy is full of this glorious hope, that when He comes in glory, there will be "a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love, and peace" (Preface for the feast of Christ the King).

Such a kingdom was interpreted as a temporal one of a thousand years, and gave place, as we will see, to the Millenarianism Heresy, described in the Book of Revelation (20:1-10). This period of a millennium symbolized the time necessary to chaining up Satan and the physical end of the world.

However, the persecution of the early Church did not give a lot of hope to its believers that they would enjoy an earthly kingdom of happiness and pleasure. Many of them shed their blood as they were devoured by beasts in the Roman Coliseum for confessing the deity of Christ.

Sts. Peter and Paul felt the necessity to leave Jerusalem: Paul to preach the Good News to the Gentiles as far as Anatolia, Greece, and Spain; Peter to establish in Rome the centre of the growing Roman community. Eventually, when both were together in Rome, Peter and Paul wanted to create new structures to develop a system for the new religion.

Tradition says that they appointed the second Pope, St. Linus (67-79). Rome had become the caput mundi, the head of the world, replacing the old empires of Persia, Egypt, and Greece.

The Church does not consist of its visible members only; as well as the Church on earth, called the Church Militant, there is the Church in purgatory, called the Church Suffering, and the Church in heaven, called the Church Triumphant.

The Church has credibility because it has certain traditional qualities. In theology they are called the marks of the Church: unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity. The Church is one; holy; universal, from the Greek word ‘Catholic’; and apostolic, meaning it proceeds from the apostles. These qualities were explained by the Fathers of the Church, and we profess faith in these Notes of the Church by saying, "I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church."

Eventually the day arrived when persecution ceased and the catacombs were closed. Emperor Constantine the Great signed the Edict of Milan (313 AD) recognizing the legal status of Christianity with the ruling, Christianum esse, licitum est: it is licit to be Christian.

From that moment the Roman empire prescribed that everyone, including Christians, should be given freedom to follow the religion which suited them. From that moment Christians were given the right to form a legal corporate body.

Constantine was the son of the Empress St. Helen, who organized a competent body of archeologists to discover the sacred places where Jesus had been born, had lived, and had died. In fact, she was able to bring to Rome relics of the crucifixion of Jesus: a piece of His cross, the nails, part of the wood bearing the inscription INRI: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudeorum (Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews).

It was an exciting and creative time for Christians, who built hundreds of magnificent churches, St. Peter’s Basilica among them. Church and state, Pope and Emperors were united, and most important, patristic theology was formulated writing down and expounding the Catholic doctrine of the fathers of the Church.

Such a prosperity, however, also brought forth a blossoming of heresies and schisms that violated the marks of the Church, dividing it into sects and dissident religions. These heresies especially concerned the nature and the Person of Christ, and the validity of the sacraments.

Msgr. Lopez-Gallo’s columns are available in two volumes for $20 each from St. Andrew’s Church Supply, 275 E. 8 Ave., Vancouver, V5T 1R9, or toll-free at 1-800-663-7161. Proceeds will go to Hogar de Nazareth Orphanage in Mexico, which he sponsors.