Complete Extant Works of Saint Ambrose, Vol. I

...Catholics and Arians alike, demanded Ambrose as bishop, even though he was still a catechumen a convert receiving instruction before baptism. Ambrose marveled, trembled, and tried to avoid the impending honor by flight; he even feigned sins, by which he might be judged unworthy of such a great office. But it was in vain; for by the order of the Emperor Valentinian I, he was compelled to receive the sacred anointing eight days after his baptism, on the seventh day of December in the year 374, at approximately 34 years of age, while the people rejoiced and all the bishops of the East and West approved.

Immediately upon being consecrated, he distributed what remained of his gold and silver to the Church or the poor, and he wished to dedicate his own estates to the Church again, leaving to his sister Marcellina only the right to enjoy the income. He placed his brother Satyrus, who had come to Milan to visit him, in charge of the administration of his house. Freed from all temporal cares, he firmly resolved not only to spend all his energy in exercising his ministry but, according to the apostolic sentiment, to spend himself even more (2 Corinthians 12:15). Having been made certain of this ordination, Basil responded to the holy pontiff thus: "He who once, he says (God), raised a prince for his people from among the shepherds of sheep, and instructed Amos taken from the herd of goats with his spirit, has now drawn a man from the royal city, to whom the leadership of the whole nation had been entrusted, sublime in wisdom, clarity of lineage, splendor of life, faculty of speech, and famous in secular affairs, to the pasturing of the flocks of Christ: who, having cast aside all the riches of this life and regarding them as loss in order to gain Christ, has taken the rudders of the great and noble ship entrusted to him, namely the Church of God, in the faith of Christ. Act therefore, O man of God, since you have not received or learned the Gospel from men, but the Lord himself has taken you from the midst of the judges of the earth and transferred you to the apostolic chair." (Epistle 55)