Tuesday, 5/2/17
Today we honor St. Athanasius who lived in Egypt from 301 to
359. Athanasius was fourteen in the year
315, when Emperor Constantine recognized Christianity’s right to exist. From that
year on, Bishop Alexander of Alexandria took in Athanasius, training him in the Scriptures.
Athanasius was nineteen in 320 when Father Arius, a
respected pastor in Alexandria, began telling people that Jesus was only a good
man, and not the unique Son of God. Bishop Alexander and the other pastors in
Alexandria forced Father Arius to either
change his message of leave Alexandria. That
had Father Arius moving over to Phoenicia where he gained many followers,
called Arians. They followed him n saying that Jesus was only a good man.
In 325, Emperor Constantine, unhappy over this split in Christianity,
summoned all the bishops to Nicaea, where
he forced them all to accept our Nicene Creed. However, after the Arian bishops
got away from the emperor’s strong arms, they reverted to their Arian beliefs.
In 337, Emperor Constantine
died, with the crown passing over to Constantius, his oldest son, and an
Arian. When that new emperor banished
Athanasius from Alexandria, he went to live with the first Catholic monk and
nuns. Those people, striving to live with God, had developed what would become the
first religious orders in our church. That began practicing fasts and lives of
penance, along with chanting psalms at set times off the day.
When Emperor Constantius forced Athanasius to leave Egypt,
he settled in Rome where he introduced the Egyptian Desert practices of prayer
and penance which gave life to the monasteries and convents of Europe.
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