Vigils Reading – St Irenaeus

WHERE THE CHURCH IS,

THERE IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD

From the writing of St Irenaeus6

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It is within reach of all who want to see the truth to discern the tradition

of the apostles which has been manifested in the whole world. All we have to do

is to list those who are appointed bishops in the churches by the apostles and

their successors up to our own time who neither taught nor recognized anything

like that which the heretics rave about. For even if the apostles would have

known “secret mysteries” which they used to teach the “perfect” separately and

secretly apart from the others, they would especially have passed these things

down to those to whom they also were entrusting the churches themselves. For

they wanted those whom they left as successors to be quite perfect and beyond

reproach in all things, handing over to them their own place as teachers. To

those who do what is right this would have great usefulness, but to those who

fall away it would be great disaster…

The preaching of the church is consistent everywhere and persists equally

and has behind it the testimony of the prophets and the apostles and all the

disciples through the beginning, middle, and end and through the whole saving

plan of God and that solid system which is in our faith which lends itself to

human salvation. We keep what we have received from the church and what is

always from the Spirit of God like some precious deposit growing in a good vase

which also makes the vase it is in to grow. For this gift of God has been entrusted

to the church, like the breath of creation, so that all the members receiving it

may be made alive. And in it has been deposited the means of communicating

with Christ, that is, the Holy Spirit, the…confirmation of our faith and ladder of

ascent to God. “For in the Church,” [Scripture] says, “God has appointed

apostles, prophets, teachers”, and all the other working of the Spirit. All who do

not gather with the church but defraud themselves of life through evil thought

and worse deed do not participate in the Spirit. For where the church is, there

is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the church and every

gift; and the Spirit is truth. Accordingly, those who do not participate in the

Spirit are not nourished unto life by the mother’s breasts nor do they receive

that brilliant fountain which flows from the Body of Christ. Rather, they dig for

themselves broken cisterns in dirty ditches and they drink putrid water from

the dirt, fleeing the faith of the church, lest they be convicted, rejecting the Spirit

that they may not be instructed.

6 UNDERSTANDING OF THE CHURCH, Edited by Glenn Hinson (Fortress Press, Phila. PA,

1986) pp. 40-42.12