When the Homily is about Immunology

Saint Athanasios on the Weekend

After Liturgy on Sunday, I took the girls down to St.Spiridon Orthodox Cathedral (OCA) for their annual Bazaar, and they had a grand time - especially dancing with the Romanian Folk dancers. The food was pretty darn good too! In the Nave of the Church they had displayed dozens of very old Russian Icons (some as old as perhaps 300 years), which no doubt many of the Russian emigrants had brought with them to America - they were beautiful and for some reason reminded me of the suffering the Russian Church experienced under the communist yoke. How dare we go and "evangelize" these people with our wussy american faith that has NEVER suffered? St. Spiridon Cathedral was established in 1895, but Orthodoxy has been here in America much longer than that.

While there, I picked up a copy of Saint Athanasios' On the Incarnation as published by Saint Vladimir's Seminary Press, with an introduction by none other than CS Lewis! Of Saint Athanasios, Mr. Lewis writes:

St. Athanasius stood Contra Mundum (against the world) for the Trinitarian doctrine "whole and undefiled," when it looked as if all the civilized world was slipping back from Christianity into the religion of Arius, into one of those "sensible" synthetic religions which are so strongly recommended today and which then, as now, included among their devoteesmany highly cultivated clergymen. The glory of St. Athanasius is that he did not move with the times; it is his reward that he now remains when those times, like all others, have passed away.

Holy Saint Athanasios, please pray unto God for us...we really need it today.