According to tradition, St. Linus was appointed by St. Peter and St. Paul as the successor of St. Peter.  In 2 Timothy 4:21 St. Paul writes about a Linus passing on his greetings to Timothy.  It is generally believed that the Linus that Paul writes about is the same Linus that St. Irenaeus writes about in his work “Against Heresies” and the same as the one who was appointed to St. Peter’s chair. St. Linus was the pope from A.D 67 to A.D 80.  Next time when you attend Mass, follow the names of the martyrs mentioned during the Eucharistic prayer.  The priest will mention St. Linus and St. Cletus among others.  Cletus was the third pope.  He was the pope between A.D 80 and A.D 88.  During the first few centuries, persecution remained central to the life of the Church. Today, when we walk into a beautiful Catholic church, we may not realize that the early Church fathers sacrificed significantly to fight against persecution.  The nature and extent of persecution varied between emperor to emperor.  Emperor Trajan (A.D 98 to 117), for instance, used persecution as the last resort compared to Emperor Nero whom we saw earlier.  While the Christians were fighting the external persecutions, this helped Christianity to grow in large numbers.  There was another type of issue the Christians had to deal with, which is the divisions within the Church.  There were divisions among Christians regarding issues like on what day the death and resurrection of our Lord should be celebrated, whether our Lord Jesus was fully human and fully divine. There was a group of people who believed anything physical is evil and that a group of people had some secret knowledge (Gnostics).  We may be tempted to romanticize the early Church and imagine a golden age of peace and harmony.   Early church fathers had to fight external persecution on the one hand and keeping the faith true to the Gospels internally. St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Polycarp and St. Irenaeus of Smyrna were among the church fathers who lived and protected the faith in this period.   The Catholic faith as we know it now, the collection of books that we call Bible now, the liturgical calendar that we take it for granted now are all the fruits of the sweat and blood of these early church fathers.  Almost all protestant Christians who converted to Catholicism converted after reading the lives of these early church fathers.  I encourage everyone to read reflect on their lives.  Next week we will understand some of the controversies that were plaguing the Church and how they were stopped.