St. Ambrose on Preaching

            St. Augustine’s conversion chronicled in his famous work The Confessions has fascinated mankind for almost 1600 years. It is clear to anyone who reads The Confessions that an integral factor in the conversion of St. Augustine was the preaching of St. Ambrose of Milan. Bertand de Margerie S.J., in his 1995 work An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, correctly points out that “the Church and mankind are indebted to the hermeneutic development by Ambrose of Milan for the conversion and Christian writings of St. Augustine of Hippo.”[1]This short paper aims to explore the preaching of St. Ambrose.

            St. Ambrose was born in 340 A.D. in Treves to a Christian family at which time his father was administering the Gallic provinces as the prefect.[2] By the time he had grown into a young man he had moved to Rome with his widowed mother.[3] In Rome he undertook a liberal arts education in preparation for a civil career composed of studies in rhetoric, jurisprudence, the works of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, and the study of Greek.[4] After studying the liberal arts he began his political career and was assigned to act as governor over the provinces of Ligui and Aemilla. Having successfully administered these provinces he was called to Milan.[5]

            It was in Milan that the life of the promising young career of Ambrose changed course forever. After the death of the Arian bishop of Milan, Auxentius, a revolt broke out in the city over who should be the next bishop. Ambrose, himself only a catechumen, was sent by the emperor to put down the revolt. While he was in the process of solving the question of who should be the next bishop, Catholics and Arian onlookers alike both shouted out his name, nominating him for the position of bishop. Ambrose who was sent as a diplomat of the emperor to find a new bishop, not to become the new bishop, considered his sins too great to be named bishop and tried to flee the city twice, only to be captured and returned each time by the citizens. Realizing that he was called to be the bishop he insisted on finding a Catholic bishop, not an Arian bishop, to baptize him and moved through the ecclesiastical grades very quickly, in only eight days after being baptized he was consecrated a bishop. Ambrose quickly came to be known as a holy bishop and a powerful preacher.[6]

            At the time that St. Ambrose was elected bishop, he was the most senior magistrate in northern Italy. He was well educated in politics and culture but he was ignorant of ecclesiastical matters, most importantly of Sacred Scripture. While not educated in the ways of churchmen, his liberal arts education, “his knowledge of Greek, -rare at that time- his habit of learning by heart, his exegetical aptitude resulting from the practice of reading and interpreting the literal and allegorical sense of a poetical text, and above all its moral meaning,” left St. Ambrose with the basic skills required for his new ministry as bishop.[7]

Even though St. Ambrose entered his new ministry without a good knowledge of Sacred Scripture, he knew well the importance of Sacred Scripture.[8]  Following the example of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, preaching became St. Ambrose’s top priority.[9] Knowing the necessity, in his role as bishop, to preach on the Word of God, St. Ambrose quickly began to study the Word of God.[10]

            Ambrose came to know the Scriptures intimately. In his sermons, the saint, frequently quoted Scripture verbatim which demonstrates how familiar he had become with the Word of God. This frequent recourse to the words of Scripture was an important for St. Ambrose because he believed that the “bible’s mode of expression was the most appropriate for pastoral speech.”[11] Ambrose believed that the bible, being the inspired word of God, was the most perfect way to instruct the faithful.

            St. Ambrose believed that the effective preacher was one who taught the faithful to participate in Divine Life by teaching them how to live as God’s people. As bishop he instructed his clergy that their primary duty as priests was to educate their people in the virtues of character. While the content of the sermon was important, St. Ambrose knew that if the preacher did not live an exemplary life his preaching would be much less effective, or worse even a potential cause of scandal.

While the preacher’s actions must agree with the way he acts, his use of rhetoric is also important. St. Ambrose believed in taking the middle road of rhetoric. The preacher’s rhetoric should not be too elaborate or too simplistic; rather it should be of a level that is dignified but understandable by everyone. St. Ambrose’s sermons, “while lacking in excitement and superficial charm, were eloquent and perceptive, full of sound learning and solid instruction, and possessing in a marked degree the power of convincing those who heard them.”[12] St. Ambrose strove to appeal his audiences’ practical mind, not to their emotions.

            St. Ambrose was greatly indebted to his predecessors, the Church Fathers of the East, for his style and content of delivering homilies. St. Ambrose, following the Eastern Fathers, truly believed that God inspired the texts of the Scriptures.[13] With this trust he drew his sermons from the practice of scriptural meditation known as lectio devina. “The method of lectio devina served to guide all of Ambrose’s preaching and writings, which stemmed precisely from prayerful listening to the Word of God.”[14] Through the practice of lectio devina the preacher opens himself up to what God desires to tell his people and in doing so truly becomes the mouthpiece of God, not his own.

In his meditation he was attuned to the allegorical method of biblical interpretation. In fact “Ambrose the exegete is often dependent on Origen, particularly in his way of allegorizing.”[15] While the allegorical level of interpretation was important for both Origen and St. Ambrose, neither of them ignored the historical or literal levels of interpretation.[16] In the application of the allegorical meaning of a biblical passage to his homily, Ambrose, proclaimed a spiritual sense, which concerned Christ, or his Church.[17] Like the Fathers, the spiritual meaning of the text always related to the profession of Faith and to the communion of the Church.[18]

Beyond the allegorical level of biblical interpretation, St. Ambrose also brought the use of Christian Platonic exegesis of Scripture into the Western Church.  St. Ambrose used the allegorical level and harmonized it with the Bible using this Platonic sense. It was precisely in this harmonizing of the Word of God with Platonic thought that drew St. Augustine to listen to St. Ambrose’s sermons and eventually led him to the Church.[19]

Many of St. Ambrose’s homilies are addressed to his local Church in Milan and are often aimed at rooting out the heresies prevalent in Milan. The majority of the saint’s homilies can be categorized as addressing the influence of the world, the truth that the Old Covenant ceaselessly prepares the image of the New Covenant and that following Christian ethics leads to eternal life. Of particular concern to St. Ambrose was the heresy of Marcion, which claimed that the Old Testament was not the inspired Word of God. One common way St. Ambrose addressed the errors of Marcion was by interpreting the Old Testament in light of St. Paul’s theology.[20]

St. Ambrose never envisioned himself as a clergyman, nor did he have any formal training for his role as Bishop, but he became an effective preacher by using the skills he formed during his formal liberal arts training and by listening to what God was saying through the Scriptures. St. Ambrose, in his method of preaching, expressed the belief, held from the earliest days of the Church that “human beings at every level of spiritual development can be enlightened and energized by the power of the word of God.”[21] Preaching, for Ambrose, began with the Sacred Texts in an attempt to live in conformity with the Divine Texts.

---

1.     Bertrand de Margerie S.J., An Introduction to the History of Exegesis Volume II The Latin Fathers, trans. Pierre de Fontnouvelle, (Petersham: St Bede’s Publications, 1995), 76.

2.     Pope Benedict XVI., The Fathers (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor , 2008), 129.

3.     Paulinus, The Life of St. Ambrose, trans. John A Lacy, Fathers of the Church 15 (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1957), 34-36. 
4.     Frend, W.H.C. The Rise of Christianity. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 618.

5.     Paulinus, The Life of St. Ambrose, trans. Lacy, 34-36.
6.   Paulinus, The Life of St. Ambrose, trans. Lacy, 34 - 43.

7.   Margerie S.J. An Introduction to the History of Exegesis Volume II The Latin Fathers, trans Fontnouvelle ,76.

8.     Benedict XVI, The Fathers, 130.

9.     Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preacing (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002), 93.

10.    Benedict XVI, The Fathers, 130.

11.    Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching, 92.

12.    Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching, 89.

13.    Broz, Jarolsav. “From Allegory to the Four Senses of Scripture Hermeneutics of the Church Fathers and of the Christian middle Ages.” In Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Exegesis by Petr Pokorny, & Jan Roskovec, 302 – 309. Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002. 302.

14.    Benedict XVI, The Fathers, 130.

15.    Margerie S.J. An Introduction to the History of Exegesis Volume II The Latin Fathers, trans Fontnouvelle ,77.

16.    Margerie S.J. An Introduction to the History of Exegesis Volume II The Latin Fathers, trans Fontnouvelle ,78 - 79.

17.    Walter M Werbylo, Integrating Patristic and Modern Exegesis of Scripture (Front Royal: Christendom Press), 2009. 232.

18.    Broz, “From Allegory to the Four Senses of Scripture Hermeneutics of the Church Fathers and of the Christian middle Ages.” 303.

19.    Freud, The Rise of Christianity, 618 & 664.

20.    Margerie, An Introduction to the History of Exegesis Volume II The Latin Fathers, 78 & 89.  
                21.    Broz,“From Allegory to the Four Senses of Scripture Hermeneutics of the Church Fathers and of the Christian Middle Ages.” 306.