A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, you will be hated by everyone on account of me. That's our lord said that, yet we keep looking for the approval of men. So our lord said to his disciples, those who were nearest to him, you will be hated by everyone on account of me. But whoever holds out till the end will escape death.
When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next. I solemnly assure you, you will not have covered the towns of Israel before the son of man comes. No pupil outranks his teacher, said our lord. No slave, his master. The pupil should be glad to become like his teacher.
The slave, like his master. And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, oh lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Today, we celebrate the feast of one of the most popular saints in the Western world.
You all, of course, grew up with novenas and devotions and prayers to Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, I'm sure. He has a Greek name because he was Greek. He flourished in the fourth century. He was the main protagonist in the great and first council of Nicaea in 03/25. He almost single handedly preserved the doctrine of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ, the son of God, is truly God.
Because you see in the time of Saint Athanasius, the fourth century, council of Nicaea 03/2025, just to keep these things in your mind, because these are frightfully important things. And we just, you know, today we get well, I can't go into that. But the point is, these in the in the what we call I guess the Middle East, whatever you want to call it. In the fourth century, the whatever we may say about Arius, who was the the founder of Arianism, or rather Arianism took its name from Arius, he was not to found anything. Whatever we may think about him, these men, pro and con, were concerned with extremely profound issues.
Issues of dogma. Dogma. I repeat dogma. Truth. Now the issue that that was the the debate between Arius and Athanasius, that that that was the big dichotomy, was this.
You have a trinity, and you have the logos. Now see, this is where where you can't escape language because the logos is the Saint John's gospel begins at the beginning was the word. Logos is the word there. Now the the logos became man in the person of Jesus Christ. Everyone accepted this.
The question is, who or what is the logos? Arius said, the logos was begotten of the father, was created by the father, therefore is subordinate to the father, therefore is not truly and totally god. You follow that clearly? I hope so. Because you see, when the Council of Nicaea and remember, if you go back even in an encyclopedia, the new Catholic Encyclopedia and read this, you will see that the losing side was Athanasius.
He's the one who was the underdog in many ways. The intelligentsia were with Arius. The the politics of the day, and there were plenty of them, the politics were with Arius. Athanasius was was a minority voice. And yet once again, once again, and this is repeated century after century, the voice of truth comes out luminous, luminous, and triumphant.
Because against all expectation, Athanasius' doctrine prevailed in the Council of Nicaea, that the trinity is made of three persons, but there is only one god. And the second person, as we call it, is truly and completely god. This whole debate was was hung upon the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, the iota, the iota. And the question was, homoie usia, that would mean similar, like to in substance, or homo usia, which means one, the same. Athanasius said the son of God is is truly God.
Not homoy, but homo, usia. And this, you see, makes the blessed mother the mother of God. Was she a mother just of a man? No. The counsel of Nicaea in taking this stand as regards the reality of Jesus Christ, I mean of the second person of the blessed trinity, they took a stand implicitly as regards the motherhood of Mary.
What was she the mother of? You see, Arius said that Christ was a body, was a man, and into that body you had infused in some way the second person of the blessed trinity. And that Mary therefore was only the mother of the man part. The counts of Nicaea, 03/2025, 325, Nicaea, Nacia Minor, the dominant figure was Athanasius. He almost single handedly, almost single handedly, prevailed that the logos is truly and holy and entirely god, completely equal to the father in all things.
And that logos, that son, became man in the womb of the blessed mother, and therefore she is the mother of God. Because in the this had to be developed. Because you see, as soon as you take this stand, that is when you say that the son of God is truly God and was born of the virgin Mary, now you have a problem about the personality of Christ. Did he have two natures or what? And that's the reason you had the councils of Constantinople and Ephesus.
And it's those three councils, Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus, covering over a hundred years that these tremendously profound questions were faced up to. That's the first point. These Greek Christians faced up to these problems. They didn't sweep them under the carpet, And they came up with these solutions which have which are still with us. That in Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, you have one person.
One person, and marries its mother. But in that person you have two natures, the divine and the human. But the person of Jesus Christ is totally and wholly divine. So that and so that Luther Luther has a is very dramatic about this. When he said you could when Jesus was walking down the street of Nazareth, you could say there walks God.
When he nursed at his mother's breast, you could say there God is nursing. So much of that. This is tremendous. Absolutely tremendous. We must we must get this into our lives.
You see, today, you know, they talk about the second Vatican Council. They didn't touch on one item of dogma. Not one. What do you hear all this talk today about the letters coming from the bishops on peace? That's not dogmatic at all.
So today as we here we are in the twentieth century commemorating Saint Athanasius, the Greek who flourished, and I mean flourished, and suffered. He suffered. He was exiled, he was persecuted. This is what it meant to be a Christian and a Catholic. And I emphasize not Christian but Catholic.
There's a distinction between the two, you know, in spite of the efforts of many to try to eliminate that distinction today. Saint Thomas More, Saint John Fisher, those Carthusian monks, they laid their lives down not to be Christians but to be Catholics. And Athanasius broke with Arians, not because of their want of being Christians, but the Catholic faith. Let us prize it. Let us realize that we do have a tremendous measure of truth, God's truth.
And let us glory in it, be confident in it, be assured in it, be reassured in it, confirmed in it. Have something else to say, it'll have to wait. But this is a tremendously important subject, folks, that we realize the truth of God, that he has given it to us because Jesus, his son, is truly God. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.