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Europe. Thus, for example, the illustrious Church of Lyons was one of the conquests made by these early Missioners ; and St. Pothinus, the first Bishop of Lyons, was a disciple of the disciple of St. Joha— St. Polycarp—the Angel of the Church of Smyrna, whose Feast we shall keep a few days hence.

But St. John’s apostolic labours in no wise inter- fered with the care, which his own filial affection and the injunctions of our Saviour imposed upon him— the care of the Blessed Mother and Virgin Mary. So long as Jesus judged her visible presence on the earth to be necessary for the consolidation of his Church, so long did John enjoy the immense happi- ness of her society, and of being permitted to treat her as his most beloved Mother. After a certain number of years, during which he had dwelt with her in the city of Ephesus, he returned with her to Jerusalem, whence she ascended to heaven from the desert of this world, as the Church sings of her, as a pillar of smoke of aromatic spices of myrrh and Frankincense? -The holy Apostle had to bear this second separation, and continue preaching the Gospel until that happy day should come, when he also should ascend to that blissful region, where Jesus his Divine Friend, and Mary his incomparable Mother, were awaiting his arrival.

The Apostles, those Lights placed by the hand of Jesus himself upon the candlestick? of the Church, died out by martyrdom one after the other, leaving St. John the scle survivor of the Twelve. His white hair, as the early Fathers tell us, was encircled with a thin plate of gold, the mark of episcopal dignity; the Churches treasured up the words which fell from his inspired ps, and considered them as their rule of Faith; and his prophecy of Patmos, the Apoca- lypse, proves that the future of the Church was also1 Apos, ii. 8. 2 Cant, ii. 6, #S8t. Matth. v. 15.