Feast Day: September 23rd | Patronage: Popes, Various Schools and Parishes that have taken him as their saint | Iconography: Papal Tiara or Pallium, Holding Book as Preacher, Balding because even saints grow old.
Linus was the first successor of St. Peter as Bishop of Rome. As early as St. Irenaeus (AD 180), we find him described as entrusted by St. Peter (and St. Paul): “the blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.” [St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:3.3.] Eusebius, the bishop and historian in the 300s, follows suit in saying that Linus was “the first to receive the episcopate of the church at Rome, after the martyrdom of Paul and Peter” [Eusebius, Church History 3.2.] and St. Jerome agrees with him. Now, there are a few (later) accounts that claim that it was Clement who actually St. Peter, with Linus and Cletus being something more akin to auxiliary bishops, assisting but not entrusted with the full office of Peter. Still, the weight of evidence tends towards Linus being the first successor of St. Peter, then Cletus, then Clement. He would have been martyred around the year 78 or 80 and was buried, along with many Christians who loved their first Holy Father, near to St. Peter’s grave on the Vatican Hill.
One fascinating insight into this early saint and leader of the Church is actually found in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. At the end of that letter, as Paul concludes his words to that beloved coworker of his, he mentions several people to pass his greetings onto, and several that send their greetings with his. One of the latter is Linus!:
Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter. Eubulus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers. The Lord be with your spirit. Grace be with you.
[2 Timothy 4:19-22]
Now, this letter would have been written towards the end of St. Paul’s life, probably when he had already come to Rome for his trial before the emperor and a decade or more after his many adventures with Timothy. I love the fact that here in Rome, under the most unlikely of circumstances, we have the great Apostle to the Gentiles not quite in chains but certainly hampered from his globe-trotting earlier days, happily stranded with St. Peter laying the foundation for the Church’s heart in the Eternal City. And there, somehow mixed into this fledgling Church is a young man named Linus, growing in his faith under the tutelage of the greatest of the Apostles. Here he is, perhaps some years into his work as a priest or bishop with the craziness of revolving emperors and sporadic persecution, and he stands by as St. Paul pens a final letter to his favorite sidekick. We don’t know if Linus ever met Timothy (though Paul certainly hopes that he would come to Rome!), but somehow they seem like kindred spirits. Separated far from one another in shepherding different parts of the Church, both young bishops got a front row seat to the astonishing work of the Holy Spirit in the early Church, and both also were faced by the same overwhelming uncertainties of guiding and guarding those earliest communities of disciples.
Thing is, the Holy Spirit hasn’t stopped working, nor has the Lord ceased to connect saints-in-the-making to one another to inspire and encourage one another.
– Fr. Dominic was recently with a handful of the priests and seminarians of the diocese down in the Alton deanery for an informal evening with young men considering how to follow the Lord wherever He is calling them. I cannot help but consider the parallels between our brotherhood – often spread from one another, but working in the same vineyard – to those leaders in the early church. Each of us was inspired by others before us, and each of us also passes that torch onto other men to step into the same spiritual fatherhood. It’s daunting, truly, but we also come to realize that Christ is the one who guarantees that the torch won’t go out.