12Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance; 13bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do. 14Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection. 15And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 16Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. 17Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him.
This passage treats character like something we put on each morning, as deliberately as choosing what to wear. Compassion, patience, and forgiveness are named as practical habits rather than lofty feelings. Love is described as the thing that holds the rest together, giving the other virtues shape and direction. On a Sunday morning, it invites us to carry gratitude into the ordinary work of the week ahead.
When you have decided that a thing ought to be done and are doing it, never avoid being seen doing it, though the many shall form an unfavourable opinion about it. For if it is not right to do it, avoid doing the thing; but if it is right, why are you afraid of those who shall find fault wrongly?
George Long, 1877
Epictetus was a Greek Stoic teacher who had been born into slavery and taught in Nicopolis in the early second century AD. He wrote nothing himself. His pupil Arrian recorded his lectures and also compiled the short Enchiridion, or "handbook", from them.
Many of us do the right thing only when nobody is looking, or we hold back because of how it might seem. Epictetus gives a two-step test. First, is the act right? If it isn't, drop it, however well it would be received. If it is, the grumbling of onlookers is not a good reason to hide it. This applies to small things as much as large ones: speaking up in a meeting, keeping a promise that is no longer convenient, or declining a bit of gossip.
PracticePick one thing you have already judged to be right but have been doing quietly or putting off because of what others might think. Do it openly today. If you can't honestly call it right, drop it instead.
In January 897 a dead pope was dug up and put on trial in Rome. The scandal cost the prosecutor his life and split the Church for years.
In January 897, in the Lateran Basilica in Rome, a corpse sat on a throne in papal vestments. It was Pope Formosus, who had died about nine months earlier. His successor but one, Stephen VI, had ordered him dug up so he could be judged. A deacon was appointed to answer the charges on the dead man's behalf.
The charges were perjury, serving as a bishop while supposedly a layman, and breaking the canon ban on moving from one bishopric to another. Formosus had left his see at Porto to become pope. The tenth-century writer Liutprand of Cremona reports that Stephen demanded to know why he had grabbed the Roman see out of ambition. Liutprand wrote decades afterward and is thought to have embellished the scene. The core facts are not in doubt: Formosus was found guilty and his papacy was declared void. His blessing fingers were cut off, and the body was thrown into the Tiber. His ordinations were annulled too, including Stephen's own ordination as a bishop.
The cause was politics. Formosus had called in the Frankish king Arnulf against Lambert of Spoleto, whose family held great sway over Rome. After Arnulf's army left and Formosus died, Lambert's side was in the ascendant, and it took revenge.
The trial backfired. Rome turned against Stephen, who was deposed, jailed and strangled in the summer of 897. In December, Pope Theodore II, who reigned only twenty days, annulled the trial and had the recovered body reburied in St. Peter's. John IX nullified it again in 898. Years later Sergius III revived the condemnation, so the question of whether Formosus's priests were real priests stayed open for a generation.
RememberIn 897 a pope's corpse was convicted for a political quarrel, and the verdict unsettled the Church for years.
Read nextLiutprand of Cremona, Antapodosis (The Complete Works of Liudprand of Cremona, trans. Paolo Squatriti)