A Reflection for the Feast of S. Athanasius, Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church
Sabbato infra Hebdomadam III post Octavam Paschæ — III. classis
The Church in her ageless wisdom places upon our lips this day two passages that, taken together, compose a single sacred portrait: the portrait of the Christian who, bearing within his frail body the immeasurable treasure of divine truth, must proclaim that truth before friend and foe, before councils and emperors, even unto the spilling of his blood. And what saint could the Church more fittingly set before us as the living exposition of these Scriptures than the great Athanasius, the Lion of Alexandria, who for nearly half a century upheld upon his shoulders the orthodox faith when, as St. Jerome lamented, “the whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian”?
“We have this treasure in earthen vessels”
St. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “For we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ our Lord… But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us” (2 Cor. iv. 5, 7, Douay-Rheims).
Here the Apostle unveils the great paradox of the Christian apostolate. The minister of Christ is not gold but clay; not marble but dust. And precisely in this lies the wisdom of God. As St. John Chrysostom observes in his homilies upon this Epistle, were the messengers themselves resplendent in their own right, men would attribute the power of the Gospel to the messengers; but since the messengers are weak, all glory rises unhindered to Him who sends them. The earthen vessel is not an obstacle to grace but its chosen instrument; not its shame but its very hallmark.
St. Augustine, expounding the same text, marvels that the Apostle does not say we are this treasure but we have this treasure — a possession not innate to us but entrusted to our keeping. The vessel does not become the gold; the dust does not become the divinity. Yet upon dust the Lord pours that which the seraphim adore.
Athanasius understood this truth in the very marrow of his being. Five times driven into exile, hunted through the deserts of Egypt, condemned by synods whose names are remembered today only because they condemned him, he carried within his breast the Nicene faith — consubstantialem Patri — when the magnificence of the imperial throne, the eloquence of the court bishops, and the cleverness of the Arian schools stood arrayed against him. Athanasius contra mundum, the Latin Fathers said: Athanasius against the world. Yet not he, but the treasure within him, withstood the world.
“We suffer tribulation, but are not distressed”
The Apostle continues: “In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not” (2 Cor. iv. 8-9). Behold the rhythm of the apostolic life — every blow answered by an unconquerable hope, every outward pressure met by an inward freedom. The saints do not deny the weight of suffering; they confess it openly, that the strength of God may be magnified in their endurance.
St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his celebrated panegyric upon our holy father (Oration xxi), names Athanasius the very pillar of the Church — columna Ecclesiæ — whose long life was a continual martyrdom of patience, since exile and contradiction were his daily bread. The Theologian remarks that Athanasius bore his trials not with the fierce composure of the pagan philosophers but with the meekness of that Lamb whose Godhead he so valiantly defended.
And St. Hilary of Poitiers — himself an exile for the faith, the Western mirror to the Eastern Athanasius — taught in his writings against the Arians that the truth of Christ’s eternal divinity was confirmed not only by the testimony of Holy Scripture but by the blood and tears of those willing to lose all rather than yield a single iota: that one Greek letter which separates homoousios (of one substance) from homoiousios (of like substance), and orthodoxy from heresy.
“Fear ye not them that kill the body”
The Gospel completes what the Epistle has begun. Our Lord, sending forth the Twelve, prepares them not for any earthly triumph after the manner of the world but for persecution after the manner of the Cross: “The disciple is not above the master, nor the servant above his lord… And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. x. 24, 28).
St. Jerome, in his commentary upon St. Matthew, draws the sharp distinction the Lord intends: there is a fear which is the beginning of wisdom, and a fear which is the beginning of apostasy. The fear of men shrinks the soul; the fear of God enlarges it. He who fears the executioner more than the Judge has already lost the better part of himself, though his body yet stand.
St. John Chrysostom, with his accustomed fire, presses the same point: the Lord does not promise to spare His servants from suffering, but to render their suffering powerless to harm them. The sword may reach the body; it cannot reach the soul without the soul’s consent. Therefore the martyr is invincible — not because he cannot be slain, but because his slaying is his coronation.
How fittingly does this Gospel echo in the life of Athanasius. When the soldiers of the apostate Julian pursued him along the Nile, his disciples wept that all was lost; but the holy Patriarch, calm in the certainty of God’s protection, turned his boat back toward his pursuers and, when asked whether he had seen Athanasius, answered that he was indeed near at hand — and so passed unrecognised through the very midst of those who sought his life. The bishop knew well the Lord’s counsel: “When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another” (Matt. x. 23). Yet his flight was never desertion; from every hiding place he ruled his flock by letters that rang through Christendom like trumpets of brass.
“Speak ye in the light… preach ye upon the housetops”
Most striking of all in this Gospel is the Lord’s command that what is whispered in the ear be preached upon the housetops. Here is no counsel of prudent silence before the face of evil. Here is the very mandate of the doctor and confessor: that the truth confided to the Church be proclaimed without abridgement, without compromise, without that cowardice which calls itself diplomacy.
St. Basil the Great, who corresponded with Athanasius and revered him as a father in the faith, lamented in his own writings that in his day the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was being drowned beneath the noise of party and faction; yet he took heart, knowing that the Spirit of God would not abandon His Church, and that the housetops would yet ring with the orthodox confession. Athanasius was that voice upon the housetop. When silence would have purchased him peace, he spoke; when speech cost him his see, he spoke still; when an emperor’s pen could have restored him by the price of a single ambiguous syllable, he refused — and went into exile rather than confuse the divinity of Christ with the dignity of a creature.
A Treasure Entrusted to Us
What, then, do these sacred texts ask of us, who are not bishops, not confessors before tribunals, not exiles in the Egyptian desert?
They ask, first, that we recognise the treasure we bear. The Catholic faith — handed down from the Apostles, sealed by the martyrs, defined by the Councils, sung in the immemorial liturgy — is no human possession to be edited at will, but a divine deposit entrusted to earthen vessels for safekeeping. To dilute it is to break the vessel and spill the gold.
They ask, second, that we cease to fear the wrong things. The opinion of the age, the displeasure of the powerful, the laughter of the worldly — these can kill no soul. But silence in the face of error, complicity with falsehood, the cowardice that styles itself charity — these can destroy what the executioner cannot reach.
They ask, third, that we speak. Not necessarily in the public square (though sometimes there too), but at our tables, in our families, before our children and our friends — that the truth taught us in the dark of personal prayer and the holy quiet of the Church may be proclaimed in the light of our daily lives.
A Practical Word for the Soul
Let the faithful, upon this feast of the great Athanasius, undertake some small but resolute act of devotion: the recitation of the Symbolum Quicumque — the Athanasian Creed — which the Church has long commended for its bracing clarity upon the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. To pray this Creed slowly, pondering each clause, is to walk for a quarter-hour in the company of the Lion of Alexandria.
Or take up some small mortification today in reparation for the silences and compromises by which we have perhaps betrayed the truth in lesser matters — the conversation cut short, the correction unspoken, the prayer omitted from human respect.
A Closing Prayer
Deus, qui pópulo tuo ætérnæ salútis beátum Athanásium minístrum tribuísti: præsta, quǽsumus; ut, quem Doctórem vitæ habúimus in terris, intercessórem habére mereámur in cælis. Per Dóminum nostrum Iesum Christum Fílium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.
O God, Who didst grant unto Thy people blessed Athanasius to be the minister of eternal salvation: vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, that we who have had him for our teacher of life upon earth may deserve to have him for our intercessor in heaven. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
If you wish to pursue these themes more deeply, the Church History learning path will lead you through the great Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century and the heroic age of the Fathers; while the Theology and Doctrine path will open the mysteries of Christ’s consubstantiality with the Father — that very dogma which Athanasius defended with his life, and which remains, today as then, the cornerstone upon which all Christian faith and worship rests.
Sancte Athanási, ora pro nobis.