Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator
As Catholic Christians we profess the belief that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. Perhaps we even take it a little bit for granted that this has always been the case. However, the first centuries of the Church's history were marked by a struggle between different groups of Christians. Those who followed the teachings of Arias did not accept the divinity of Jesus, looking at him as a human prophet sent by God for the salvation of the human race. The Arian heresy persisted for centuries before the Church successfully included Christ's divinity as a part of the creed.
One of the champions of this fight was St. Athanasius whose memorial we keep today. He endured the suffering of exile at least five times in the course of his life because of his unflagging faith in the divinity of Jesus. For his stalwart defense of Jesus as God made flesh, St. Athanasius is remembered as a Doctor of the Church.
St. Athanasius is the first of the patriarchs to identify the current twenty-seven books of the New Testament as the Christian Canon. He is also most probably responsible for the description of Jesus as "consubstantial" with the Father, a word that has recently been reintroduced into the English translation of the Nicene Creed.