Today January 14

Today is the feast of St. Hilary of Poitiers (320 - 368), doctor of the Church. Now the beginning of a new (school) term, his feast has lent the name "Hilary term" to the spring semester in England. A bright pagan, he came to the conclusion -- entirely naturally -- that polytheism must be wrong, because God must be one.

He was impressed with the Name given to Moses for God, I AM WHO AM, and felt his reading of the entire Old Testament completed in the New, especially the high theology of John, stating that the Divine Word, God the Son, is coeternal with the Father. He accepted, and was baptized, as an adult.

He was a poet, and he wrote:

I am well aware,
Almighty God and Father,
that in my life I owe You
a most particular duty.
It is to make my every thought
and word speak of You.
In fact, You have conferred on me
this gift of speech,
and it can yield no greater return
than to be at your service.

He was an idealist and saw through hypocrisy. Though he could be the gentlest of men, his words could be strong, full of invective and the severest language. He was afraid of no one. He rebuked the (last) Arian emperor, Constantius, and made a renegade bishop, Auxentius, sign an orthodoxy oath (to the effect that Jesus Christ is the true God, of the same substance of the Father.)

He was banished from his French see (to which he had been appointed as a layman. He was made bishop by popular acclaim, took holy orders, and what he did with his wife and daughter -- the daughter's name was Apra; the wife's is not recorded -- is unknown. Presumably he provided for them.) and sent to Phrygia in the East. But Hilary "had the greatest veneration for the truth, sparing no pains in its pursuit and dreading no dangers in its defence." - Butler's Lives. He was soon defending the council of Nicaea, even confronting the emperor in Constantinople, and challenging the Arian Saturninus to public debate. He so riled the people they begged him to be sent back to France. And so he was.

Arianism pretty much died with Constantius; Hilary, who desired to give his life as a martyr, ended his days in peace. St. Hilary, pray for us.