Mass was offered today for the repose of the soul of Patrick McClare (+), may he rest forever in the embrace of God.
Many years ago, I worked briefly in Egypt. I wasn't very religious and was feeling a little protestant in those days: asking too many questions about Church history and theology that the people I knew couldn't answer. Most young people have this problem. The failure of catechesis in the last fifty years has made it even harder to produce the pat answers to common questions that Catholics in the past had, and the decrease in the numbers of vocations to the priesthood and the Religious life has resulted in fewer authorities on such matters to be found.
But coming back to Egypt. Visiting churches for Sunday Mass infrequently (the job did not permit it and the only regular Mass I could bother to find was in French), I lost the sense of the presence of the Latin Church in Cairo, and... AND... I was completely oblivious of the other ancient Church sitting right around me, heavily persecuted and abused in her own land - the Coptic Church of Egypt, part of it Oriental Orthodox and partly Catholic. One day, I shall revisit Egypt, and then I shall make a proper tour of both Cairo and Alexandria, trying to identify the traditional sites of the Coptic Christians. I shall have to find a tour-guide, too.
All this was running through my head as I thought of the great Saint of today. To keep this blog-post short, Athanasius the Confessor was the twentieth bishop of Alexandria, a See that was first occupied by the Evangelist Saint Mark, whose feast day was precisely a week ago. Learn more about him here. He was some fifty years a bishop, but often banished by the civil authority, because of his political and theological enemies. For some time he was the only Catholic and Trinitarian theologian and bishop, when all the others at the time had subscribed to the heresy that is called Arianism, which in different degrees denied the divine nature of Christ.
And so Saint Athanasius has become forever joined to the theological defence of the Catholic Faith, in particular against Arianism. He joined battle at the age of twenty-seven as a deacon and assistant at the first ecumenical council in AD 325. As the patriarch in Alexandria, Arians declared against him, Catholics for him. As the Roman popes succeeded one another and emperors rose and fell, Athanasius remained the rock for the Catholics as the various bishops pushed and pulled with synod after synod. He became known as Athanasius Contra Mundum - Athanasius against the World. When he died, Arianism was practically dead already and He is now seen as one of the four great Eastern Doctors of the Church. The Orthodox Church in the East calls him 'Father of Orthodoxy.' May he always pray for the Catholic Church, especially when she is caught within herself in theological wars.
Andre2 May 2020 at 16:45
ReplyDeleteI have great love for the Coptic Orthodox Church. They helped me to understand that the early church was Catholic and used ceremonies and sacraments, as I used to be a Protestant (Arian firstly then Modalist and then somehow accepting the Trinity but not fully) and I was Muslim, then became an Arian Christian (Christadelphian) and his book (on the incarnation) helped me to accept the true fact that Christ is God. Born eternally from the Father not in time or space. I am Catholic now since January 2019, the day I went for a life confession as I was born into a non-practising Catholic family.
I thank the Orthodox churches generally for helping me appreciate our lost Latin/Western heritage and tradition and that our church is one of the Apostolic churches alongside theirs.
I wish I knew them better. I've not read very much of Athanasius; it's mostly his witness of life that inspires me. I've got to remedy that: find some of his writings.
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