Saint Athanasius Church, Găgăuzia, Moldova.
Biserica Sf. Atanasie din Etulia, Găgăuzia.
Photo: 12 July 2025.
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Text is from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 8.
Paschal-Time.
Book II.
The Court of Our Divine King, during this grandest of Seasons, is brilliant beyond measure; and, today, it is gladdened by the arrival of one of the most glorious champions that ever fought for His Holy Cause.
Among the guardians of the Word of Truth, confided by Jesus to the Earth, is there one more faithful than Athanasius ?
Does not his very name remind us of dauntless courage in the defence of the Sacred deposit, of heroic firmness and patience in suffering, of learning, of talent, of eloquence — in a word, of everything that goes to form a Saint, a Bishop, and a Doctor of The Church ?
Athanasius lived for The Son of God; the cause of The Son of God was that of Athanasius: He who Blessed Athanasius, Blessed the Eternal Word; and he who insulted Athanasius insulted the Eternal Word.
Never did our Holy Faith go through a greater ordeal than in the sad times immediately following the Peace of The Church, when the Barque of Peter had to pass through the most furious storm that Hell has, so far, let loose against her.
Satan had vainly sought to drown the Christian race in a sea of blood; the sword of persecution had grown blunt in the hands of Diocletian and Galerius; and The Cross appeared in the heavens, proclaiming the triumph of Christianity.
Saint Athanasius Church,
Lozen, Sofia Province, Bulgaria.
Photo: 14 May 2011.
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Scarcely had The Church become aware of her victory, when she felt herself shaken to her very foundation. Hell sent upon the Earth a heresy which threatened to blight the fruit of three hundred years of Martyrdom.
Arius began his impious doctrine, that he who had hitherto been adored as The Son of God was only a creature, though the most perfect of all creatures.
Immense was the number, even of the Clergy, that fell into this new error; the Emperors became its abettors; and had not God Himself interposed, men would soon have set up the cry throughout the World that the only result of the victory gained by the Christian Religion was to change the object of idolatry, and put a new idol, called Jesus, in place of the old ones.
Saint Athanasius Greek Orthodox Church,
Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney, Australia.
Photo: 20 May 2018.
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But He, Who had promised that the gates of Hell should never prevail against His Church, faithfully fulfilled His promise.
The primitive Faith triumphed; the Council of Nicæa proclaimed the Son to be consubstantial with The Father; but The Church stood in need of a man in whom the cause of the consubstantial Word should be, so to speak, incarnated — a man with learning enough to foil the artifices of heresy, and with courage enought to bear every persecution without flinching.
This man was Athanasius: And everyone that adores and loves The Son of God, should love and honour Athanasius.
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria.
Available on YouTube
Five times banished from his See of Alexandria by the Arians, who even sought to put him to death, he fled for protection to the West, which justly appreciated the glorious Confessor of Jesus’ Divinity.
In return for the hospitality accorded him by Rome, Athanasius gave her of his treasures. Being the admirer and friend of the great Saint Antony of Egypt, he was a fervent admirer of the Monastic life, which, by the Grace of The Holy Ghost, had flourished so wonderfully in the deserts of his vast Patriarchate.
He brought the precious seed to Rome, and the first Monks seen there were the ones introduced by Athanasius.
The heavenly plant became naturalised in its new soil; and though its growth was slow at first, it afterwards produced fruit more abundantly than it had ever done in the East.
Athanasius, who has written so admirably upon that fundamental Dogma of our Faith — the Divinity of Christ — has also left us most eloquent treatises on the Mystery of the Pasch: They are to be found in the “Festal” Letters which he addressed each year to the Churches of his Patriarchate of Alexandria.
The collection of these Letters, which were once thought to have been irretrievably lost, was found, a few years back [Editor: Abbot Guéranger was writing circa 1875], in the Monastery of Saint Mary of Scete, in Egypt.
The first, for the year 329 A.D., begins with these words, which beautifully express the sentiments we should feel at the approach of Easter: “Come, my beloved brethren, celebrate the Feast; the Season of the year invites you to do so. The Sun of Justice, by pouring out His Divine Rays upon you, tells you that the time of the Solemnity is come.
“At such tidings, let us keep a glad Feast; let not the joy slip from us with the fleeting days, without our having tasted of its sweetness”.
During almost every year of his banishment, Athanasius continued to address a Paschal Letter to his people. The one in which he announces the Easter of 338 A.D., and which he wrote at Treves, begins thus: “Though separated from you, my brethren, I cannot break through the custom which I have always observed, and which I received from the Tradition of the Fathers.
“I will not be silent; I will not omit announcing to you the time of the Holy annual Feast, and the day on which you must keep the Solemnity. I am, as you have doubtless been told, a prey to many tribulations I am weighed down by heavy trials; I am watched by the enemies of truth, who scrutinise everything I write, in order to rake up accusations against me and thereby add to my sufferings; yet notwithstanding, I feel that the Lord strengthens and consoles me in my afflictions.
“Therefore, do I venture to address to you the annual celebration; and from the midst of my troubles, and despite the snares that beset me, I send you, from the furthermost part of the Earth, the tidings of the Pasch, which is our salvation.
“Commending my fate into God’s hands, I will celebrate this Feast with you; distance of place separates us, but I am not absent from you. The Lord Who gives us these Feasts, Who is Himself our Feast, Who bestows upon us the gift of His Spirit — He unites us spiritually to one another, by the bond of concord and peace”.
How grand is this Pasch, celebrated by Athanasius, an exile on the Rhine, in union with his people who keep their Easter on the banks of the Nile !!!
It shows us the power of the Liturgy to unite men and make them, at one and the same time, and despite the distance of Countries, enjoy the same Holy emotions and feel the same aspirations to virtue.
Greeks or Barbarians, we have all the same mother-country, The Church; but that which, after Faith, unites us all into one family, is The Church’s Liturgy.
