Hippolytus was a priest and a learned man, the most important writer of the Church at Rome in the early third century. He strongly attacked the popes of the time, and was set up as a rival Pope to St Callistus. Some time later, in Maximin’s persecution, he was sent to labour in the quarries of Sardinia. There he met the then Pope, Pontian, and was reconciled with him.

Theodoret of Cyrus or Cyrrhus was an influential theologian of the School of Antioch, biblical commentator, and Christian bishop of Cyrrhus. He played a pivotal role in the Christological controversies in the 5th-century Byzantine church, notably the Nestorian controversy concerning the twofold nature of Christ and the validity of the title “Mother of God”. Having experienced in his own diocese the process of reconciling heretics and schismatics to the Church, he strove earnestly for unity by urging the condemnation of Nestorius’ heretical doctrines without personally condemning Nestorius himself. As a result he himself found himself condemned and excommunicated by the Second Council of Ephesus, and was rehabilitated only after the death of the Emperor and an appeal to Pope Leo the Great. He was declared orthodox by the Council of Chalcedon.

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).