May 2, 2018
Collect
Our Lady of Lourdes, Bethesda, Md.
“Almighty
ever-living God, you raised up the Bishop St. Athanasius as an outstanding
champion of your Son’s divinity” (Collect).
If you think
there’s been a lot of contention in the Catholic Church since Vatican II, it’s
nothing compared to the unhappy experience of the Church after the very 1st
ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea, which took place in 325.
Nicaea was
convened so that the Church could settle a debate over just who Jesus Christ
was. A priest named Arius from
Alexandria, Egypt—the 2d-most important city in the Roman Empire—was teaching
that Christ was more than an ordinary man but less than God. Arius and his
followers, in the words of Pope Benedict, “reduced [Christ] to a creature
‘halfway’ between God and man,” which is something many people today also like
to do because they can’t grasp how God himself could become a human being, or
how a human being could at the same time be truly the Son of God.
The bishops
who assembled at Nicaea didn’t agree with Arius. They confirmed as the belief of the Church
that Jesus Christ was fully divine: “God
from God, true God from true God, consubstantial with the Father,” as they
stated in what we now call the Nicene Creed.
By “consubstantial,” the Church means that whatever God the Father is by
his nature, his substance, that also is God the Son, who became human as Jesus
of Nazareth.
Unfortunately,
that didn’t settle the issue, partly because the Arians—including a good number
of bishops—refused to go along with what the council had said, and partly
because theology became also a political issue.
The Emperor Constantine and his successors wanted a united empire—no
dissension in politics or religion—and thought that Arianism was easier for
people to understand and accept. So
those who held to the orthodox teaching of the Church—the creed of Nicaea—had a
hard time of it. Theological arguments
very often led to riots and bloodshed—a 4th-century Christian version of what
we see going on in parts of the Islamic world today as Shiites, Sunnis, and
adherents of other forms of Islam fight each other.
Athanasius
took part in the Council of Nicaea as a young priest, and not long after was
made bishop of Alexandria. He became “the pillar of the Church,” a model of
orthodox teaching for the whole Church in both its Eastern and Western
branches. Pope Benedict called him “the impassioned
theologian” of the Word made flesh, “the most important and tenacious adversary
of Arianism.” Altho some bishops and the
emperors would settle on a theological compromise, there could be no compromise
on the truth of the Creed with Athanasius, in his preaching, his pastoral
letters, and his theological writings.
He and the Arians became implacable enemies, and it cost Athanasius
greatly. The threat of violence and
imperial hostility forced him into exile from Alexandria 5 times in 30 years,
sometimes running for his life. Only in
366 was he finally able to settle down in his diocese and live his last 7 years
in peace.
In his book The Incarnation of the Word, Athanasius
wrote that the divine Word was made flesh, becoming like one of us for our
salvation—“was made man so that we might be made God … and he endured the
insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.” Thru our communion with Christ we can truly
be united to God; he has really become God-with-us and God-for-us.
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