Homily for the Memorial of
St. Hilary of Poitiers
January 13, 2023
Provincial
House, New Rochelle, N.Y.
We celebrate
today the memorial not of a mountain climber or a political climber but of a theologian
who helps us climb to the life of the Holy Trinity.
St. Hilary (c. 310-c. 367) was the greatest opponent of Arianism in the Western Church in the 4th century. He converted to Christianity as an adult. After becoming bishop of Poitiers (in west-central Gaul) a generation after the Council of Nicea, he so championed orthodoxy that the emperor, a proponent of Arianism, exiled him to Asia Minor. There his defense of orthodoxy caused the emperor to think he was more trouble in the East than back in Gaul, and he sent him home.
Hilary’s
contacts with Eastern theologians during his exile deepened this own thought,
enabling him to compose his masterpiece On
the Trinity, in which, quoting Pope Benedict, he “explained his personal
journey toward knowledge of God and took pains to show that not only in the New
Testament but also in many Old Testament passages, in which Christ’s mystery
already appears, Scripture clearly testifies to the divinity of the Son and his
equality with the Father.”[1]
Notwithstanding
the vigor with which he defended orthodoxy against his theological adversaries,
he was known for his kindness, charity, and conciliatory spirit—a lesson that many
Catholics could use in their social media, and perhaps we too in our daily
lives.
Hilary’s
theological reflection was based on his baptismal faith, as is our vocation. In his treatise on the Trinity, he offered
some prayers, like this one cited by Pope Benedict: “Obtain, O Lord, that I may
keep ever faithful to what I have professed in the symbol of my regeneration,
when I was baptized in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. That I may worship you, our Father, and with
you, your Son; that I may deserve your Holy Spirit, who proceeds from you thru
your Only Begotten Son. Amen.”
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