Let’s go to Saint Athanasius..and we will understand many things

Corrado Gnerre

I have heard of Saint Athanasius, who would have lived through a period of very serious crisis in the Church, comparable in a certain way to the current one. But who was Saint Athanasius really and why is his story relevant to us?

Dear …, this is indeed the case, because the time in which Saint Athanasius lived was a great crisis of orthodoxy, that is, of authentic doctrines, like today.

In the second half of the fourth century, Catholic truth was in danger of disappearing. Famous is the phrase of St. Jerome who described those times: “And the world, dismayed, found itself Arian.” In this context, Saint Athanasius did not yield.

He was a young bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. He was left alone to defend the purity of doctrine that for nearly half a century, the survival of authentic faith in Jesus Christ turned into a dispute between people in favor and against Athanasius. St. Hilary of Poitiers said that the Arians always had the shrewdness to reject any dogmatic confrontation regarding the question of the nature of Jesus because they knew that their theses could not be founded on Tradition or on the defined Magisterium. They limited themselves to doing what those who cannot further argue in a given argument usually do: instead of answering the questions, they slander. The doctrinal discussion was often turned into conflict over personal matters. Poor Saint Athanasius was accused of the greatest atrocities. A technique that never goes out of fashion. The Arians, however, did not limit themselves to this. They also worked with great cunning. First of all, they tried to occupy as many episcopal sees and then they launched what was subsequently defined as semi-Arianism. Another typical technique of heresies: once condemned, they re-emerge proposing a compromise between truth and error. The Arians propagated the need to replace the term established by the Council of Nicaea homoousion (regarding the relationship between Father and Son within the Trinity) with the term homoiousion. Difference of a single letter, which was minimal, but that changed everything. In fact, the first term (homoousion) means “of the same substance”, the second term (homoiousion) means “similar in essence”. In translating you understand the difference is not insignificant. While many bishops allowed themselves to be persuaded by this terminological compromise, which was yielding to doctrine, St Athanasius held firm, resisted like a lion. He suffered exile five times but did not give up. In 335 in Tyre, Palestine, a synod was convened to settle the controversy and therefore to decide what should be the attitude towards the affirmation of St. Athanasius. The council defined the Bishop of Alexandria with these terms: “arrogant”, “proud” and “man who wants discord”. Pope Julius I tried to defend him, but soon he died and poor Saint Athanasius was attacked again. Meanwhile, even the political power was raging against him: Emperor Constantius hated him. A council was convened in Arles and here the bishops were forced to sign a condemnation of Saint Athanasius. Those who opposed him, defending him, were sent into exile, this was the case of Paolino di Treviri. The same fate also fell to the legitimate pope Liberius, who was replaced by an antipope, Felix. It was then that what is remembered as the “fall” of a pope happened. Liberius, in order to obtain power and return to Rome as a legitimate pope, also decided to accept the ambiguous semi-Arian definition, yet until then he had distinguished himself of a convincing definition of the homoosius of the Council of Nicaea. Other councils marked the triumph of heresy: the non-ecumenical ones of Rimini and Seleucia, the year was 359. But it was foreseeable that by the way Saint Athanasius was treated and above all by how the true faith was denied, the punishment was at the door. Emperor Constantius, who died in 360, was succeeded by Julian known as “the apostate” (330-363), who came to repudiate baptism trying to restore paganism. It didn’t take long for the new emperor Valens, as well as the new pope Damasus, to understand that Saint Athanasius was right and rehabilitated him. The intrepid defender of the Catholic faith died on May 2, 373.

Dear …, two things must be emphasized here.

The first: in the time of Saint Athanasius, only he and a small community, the bishops of Egypt and Libya, defended the faith. Only they knew how to keep the light of faith burning.

The second: it is significant that the one who fought alone against the Arian heresy was never a theologian. His great theological wisdom, more than from his studies, came to him from the encounter with the Christian masters who testified to his martyrdom during the persecutions of Diocletian; and above all from the encounter with the great Saint Anthony. Arius, on the other hand, gathered great consensus for his great biblical and theological preparation. In short, he was, dear …, like so many theologians who today are the most popular in debates, on the front pages of newspapers and on television talk shows.