SHARING GOD'S ENTERPRISE


SAINT ATHANASIUS, BISHOP, DOCTOR  

Acts 5:34-42; Ps 27:1,4,13-14; Jn 6:1-15

The Heavenly Enterprise

Our profession of faith is our entrance into a heavenly enterprise with God. We share in the mission of the Son of Man, which is to accomplish the will of the Father. We have explained how the Son of Man is the Sacrament of the Eternal Word. The Son of Man is our principle of spiritual life. In him, the will of the Father is re-established with the atonement of sin and the defeat of forces of evil and darkness that hinder us from doing the will of God. The proof of our redemption is the resurrection of the Son of Man. His rising from the dead also demonstrates the involvement of God, who glorified man by raising the Son of Man from the dead. These are the contents of the faith the apostles professed. They proclaimed the Gospel to the people, convinced of its power to save us from every evil, worldly limitation, and trouble. Their profession of faith enabled them to witness the risen Lord and share his glory through the Holy Spirit they received. Fully convinced of the heavenly contents of the Gospel and its power, they proclaimed it to the people. But this conviction is not shared by those without faith in the risen Lord, for they did not receive the Spirit from heaven.

The religious elders, the ruling families, and the Sadducees witnessed the miracles worked in the name of the risen Lord but refused to share in the conviction of the disciples, which only faith confers. Thus, they were angry and ready to kill the disciples for disobeying their injunction forbidding them to preach in the name of Jesus Christ. Many do not share our faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore, they may be angry with us for confessing Jesus Christ through our words and way of life. In our world of different and opposing confessions of faiths and unbelief, the Pharisee, Gamaliel, gives us a means of discerning what comes from God. “What I suggest, therefore, is that you leave these men alone and let them go. If this enterprise, this movement of theirs, is of human origin it will break up of its own accord; but if it does in fact come from God you will not only be unable to destroy them, but you might find yourselves fighting against God.” The enterprise and the truth the disciples proclaimed endured to date. Thus, apostolicity has become one of the distinguishing marks of the Church and the Christian faith. The Church remains steadfast in confessing her faith in the Lord, which is the source of her solidity. By our confession of faith in the risen Lord, we become one with the Lord through the Holy Spirit of adoption, who jointly witnesses the resurrection of Jesus Christ with us. “The Lord is my light and help; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; before whom shall I shrink?”

The heavenly enterprise is the will of the Father, which the Son of Man preached confidently because of his faith in the Father. His knowledge of his Father’s will enabled him to act confidently, trusting that the Father would never fail him in preaching the Gospel. Seeing the large crowd of people gathered to listen to him, he asked the disciples to make them sit down. He blessed the five loaves and two fish and gave them to distribute to the people. “When they had eaten enough, he said to the disciples, ‘Pick up the pieces left over, so that nothing gets wasted.’ So they picked them up, and filled twelve hampers with scraps left over from the meal of five barley loaves.” Nothing impedes the will of God, and nothing is impossible for God. The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ offers us a way to commune with God. Saint Athanasius understood this truth and fought his whole life to preserve the purity and orthodoxy of the Christian doctrine constituting the heavenly enterprise. He was born in Alexandria. He assisted Bishop Alexander at the Council of Nicaea and later succeeded him as bishop. He fought against the Arian heresy all his life, which denies the union of God and man in Jesus Christ. The Christian enterprise is not heavenly if God is not in Christ, reconciling man to himself. He suffered as a consequence of this and spent 17 years in exile. He wrote outstanding theological works to explain and defend the Church’s doctrines.

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, who raised up the Bishop Saint Athanasius as an outstanding champion of your Son’s divinity, mercifully grant, that, rejoicing in his teaching and his protection, we may never cease to grow in knowledge and love of you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

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