Doctor of Orthodoxy, Champion of the Faith
As a child, he baptized his friends, only to have the bishop say he did it right.
As a deacon, he guarded the Truth of Christ’s full divinity and full humanity. When it was said that the whole world was against him, he responded: “Then I am against the world.”
As a bishop and patriarch, he never sat comfortably. He warred against heresy, because heresy leads people to sin and hell. The state meant nothing but an encumbrance to him.
He lived glorifying God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who saw it fit that the Second Person of the Divine Trinity engage in the most radical thing ever. Christ became man so that we might become God.
His feast day is today. And in his witness, in the glory that God rendered through him, earth, purgatory, and heaven sing Athanasius’s praise.
________
In ancient times before the divine sojourn of the Savior took place, even to the saints death was terrible; all wept for the dead as though they perished. But now that the Savior has raised his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample on it as it were nothing and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. And that devil that once maliciously exulted in death, now that its pains were loosed, remained the only one truly dead.”
–St. Athanasius of Alexandria
________
