My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
ON JANUARY 18TH OUR HOLY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH COMMEMORATES OUR FATHERS AMONG THE SAINTS ATHANASIUS AND CYRIL, PATRIARCHS OF ALEXANDRIA
+
Apolytikion (Dismissal) Hymn. Third Tone
Shining forth with works of Orthodoxy, ye quenched every false belief and teaching and became trophy-bearers and conquerors. And since ye made all things rich with true piety, greatly adorning the Church with magnificence, Athanasius and wise Cyril, ye both have worthily found Christ God, Who doth grant great mercy to all.
Kontakion Hymn. Fourth Tone
Great high priests of piety and noble champions of the holy Church of Christ, keep and preserve all those who chant: O most compassionate Lord, do Thou graciously save those who faithfully honor Thee.
+
In the half-century after the First Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea in 325 A.D., if there was one man whom the heretical Arians feared and hated more intensely than any other, as being able to lay bare the whole error of their teaching, and to marshal, even from exile or hiding, the beleaguered forces of the Orthodox, it was Saint Athanasius the Great. This blazing lamp of Orthodoxy, which imperial power and heretics' plots could not quench when he shone upon the lampstand, nor find when he was hidden by the people and monks of Egypt, was born in Alexandria about the year 296 A.D. He received an excellent training in Greek letters and especially in the Sacred Scripture, of which he shows an excellent training in Greek letters and especially in the man he had a remarkable depth of theological understanding; he was only about twenty years old when he wrote his treatise On the Incarnation. Saint Alexander, the Archbishop of Alexandria, brought him up in piety, ordained him his deacon, and, after deposing Arius for his blasphemy against the divinity of the Son of God (the Arians rejected the belief that Christ was God), took Athanasius to the First Council in Nicaea in 325 A.D.; Saint Athanasius was to spend the remainder of his life laboring in defense of this holy Council. In 326 A.D., before his death, Alexander appointed Athanasius his successor.
In 325 A.D. Arius had been condemned by the Council of Nicaea; yet through Arius' hypocritical confession of Orthodox belief, Saint Constantine the Great was persuaded by Arius' supporters that he should be received back into communion of the Church. But Saint Athanasius, knowing well the perverseness of his mind, and the disease of heresy lurking in his heart, refused communion with Arius. The heresiarch's followers then began framing false charges against Saint Athanasius, finally Saint Constantine the Great, misled by grave charges of the Saint's misconduct--which were completely false--had him exiled to Triberis (Treves) in Gaul in 336 A.D. When Saint Constantine was succeeded by his three sons Constantine II, Constans, and Constantius, in 337 A.D. Saint Athanasius returned to Alexandria in triumph. But his enemies found an ally in Constantius, Emperor of the East; Saint Athanasius' second exile was spent in Rome. It was ended when Constans prevailed with threats upon his brother Constantius to restore Saint Athanasius. For ten years Saint Athanasius strengthened Orthodoxy throughout Egypt, visiting the whole country and encouraging all, clergy, monastics, and lay folk, being loved by all as a father. But after Constans' death in 350 A.D. Constantius became sole Emperor and Saint Athanasius was again in danger. In the evening of February 8, 356 A.D., General Syrianus with more than five thousand soldiers surrounded the church in which Saint Athanasius was serving, and broke open the doors. Saint Athanasius' clergy begged him to leave, but the good shepherd commanded that all the flock should withdraw first; and only when he was assured of their safety, be also, protected by divine grace, passed through the midst of the soldiers and disappeared into the desert of Egypt, where for some six years he eluded the soldiers and spies sent after him.
When Julian the Apostate succeeded Constantius in 361 A.D., Saint Athanasius returned again, but only for a few months. Because Saint Athanasius had converted many pagans, and the priests of the idols in Egypt wrote to Julian that if Athanasius remained, idolatry would perish in Egypt, the heathen Emperor ordered not Athanasius' exile, but his death. Saint Athanasius took a ship up the Nile. When he learned that his imperial pursuers were following him, he had his men turn back, and as his boat passed that of his pursuers, they asked him if he had seen Athanasius. "He is not far," he answered. After returning to Alexandria for a while, he fled again to the Thebaid until Julian's death in 363 A.D. Saint Athanasius suffered his fifth and last exile under Valens in 363 A.D., which only lasted four months because Valens, fearing a sedition among the Egyptians for their beloved Archbishop, revoked his edict in February, 366 A.D.
The Great Athanasius passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace. Of his forty-seven years as Patriarch, he had spent some seventeen years in exiles. Shining from the height of his throne like a radiant evening star, and enlightening the Orthodox with the brilliance of his words for yet a little while, this much-suffering champion inclined toward the sunset of his life, and, in the year 373 A.D. took his rest from his lengthy sufferings, but not before another luminary of the Truth, Basil the Great, had risen in the East, being consecrated Archbishop of Caesarea in 370 A.D. Besides all his other achievements, Saint Athanasius wrote the life of Saint Anthony the Great, with whom he spent time in his youth; ordained Saint Frumentius first bishop of Ethiopia; and in his Paschal Encyclical for the year 367 A.D. set forth the books of the Old and New Testaments accepted by the Church as canonical. Saint Gregory the Theologian, in his Oration On the Great Athanasius, said he was "Angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind...rebuking with the tenderness of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler...Everything was harmonious, as an air upon a single lyre, and in the same key; his life, his teaching, his struggles, his dangers, his return, and his conduct after his return... he treated so mildly and gently those who had injured him, that even they themselves, if I may say so, did not find his restoration distasteful."
SAINT CYRIL
Saint Cyril was also from Alexandria, born about the year 376 A.D., the nephew of Theophilos, Patriarch of Alexandria, who also instructed the Saint in his youth. Having first spent much time with the monks in Nitria, he later became the successor to his uncle's throne in 412 A.D. In 429 A.D., when Cyril heard tidings of the teachings of the new Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, he began attempting through private letters to bring Nestorius to renounce his heretical teachings about the Incarnation; and when the heresiarch did not repent, Saint Cyril, together with Pope Celestine of Rome, led the Orthodox opposition to his error. Saint Cyril presided over the Third Ecumenical Council of the 200 Holy Fathers in the year 431 A.D., who gathered in Ephesus under Saint Theodosius the Younger. At this Council, by his most wise words he put to shame and convinced the impious doctrine of Nestorius, who, although he was in town, refused to appear before Cyril. Saint Cyril, besides overthrowing the error (heresy) of Nestorius, has left to the Church full commentaries on the Gospels of Saints Luke and John. Having shepherded the Church for 32 years, he reposed in 444 A.D.
____________________________________________________
MY BLESSING TO ALL OF YOU
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
+
Glory Be To GOD For All Things!
+++
With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George