On the 7th May
It happens that you sit down at your kitchen table on a quite lonely Friday night while some pita bread with black cummin seeds is baking in your oven. It is the 7th May 2021, and it was a cold day, with temperatures outside as if it were still winter. By now it has become nothing but annoying to you that you still need to wear your black thick winter jacket. Everyone is longing for the light and warmth of the sun, but we are just as deprived of it as of company, community, and breathing freely.
Throughout the day you sat close to the heating in your kitchen most of the time, finishing and publishing two articles you had been working on: The Mount of Olives, and praying ad orientem, and Sanctifying every moment and praying without ceasing: the sign of the cross. You checked the news more often than healthy, and your social media apps more often than necessary. Even though you know, for sure, that this is not exactly the way to sanctify every moment and to pray without ceasing…
Before baking the bread, mixing flour, oil, water, salt and the black cummin seeds, you jotted down some old school prayers into your handwritten prayer book. Among them a grace at meal prayer that appears in writings of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria:
“We give Thee thanks, our Father, for the Resurrection which Thou hast manifested to us through Jesus, Thy Son; and even as this bread which is here on this table was formerly scattered abroad and has been made compact and one, so may Thy Church be reunited from the ends of the earth for Thy Kingdom, for Thine is the power and glory for ever and ever. Amen.“
Ancient grace at meal prayer
And now here you sit, waiting for your evening bread, and at least for once you entertain a good thought: In the absence of everyone else in the midst of the ghost town you are living in, you think of the saints, who are our friends. You decide to open the Catholic liturgy app Laudate instead of facebook. You are curious: Who of the saints is remembered today?
Many, let me tell you – the app shows one a long list. But then there is one specific commemoration on the 7th May that I have never heard of before and that makes me very, very happy as I discover it: the Apparition of the Holy Cross…
So after I had eaten my evening bread, I decided to share this discovery here.
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem‘s letter to the Roman emperor Constantius of Constantinople, the son of the famous Emperor Constantine, about the miraculous Apparition of the Holy Cross over Jerusalem in the year 351
“But you, most pious Lord Emperor, have surpassed your father’s piety with an even greater reverence for the divine, and in your time miracles have now appeared no longer from the ground but in the heavens: the trophy of the victory which our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, won over death – I refer to the blessed Cross – has been seen flashing like lightning over Jerusalem.“
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem‘s Letter to the Emperor Constantius of Constantinople
“During these holy days of the holy Paschal season, [on May 7th (missing from about half of the manuscripts)] at about nine in the morning, a gigantic luminous cross was seen in the sky above holy Golgotha, extending as far as the holy Mount of Olives; not seen by one or two only, but clearly visible to the whole population of the city; nor, as might be expected, quickly vanishing like an optical illusion, but suspended for several hours above the earth before the general gaze, and by its dazzling splendor conquering the sun’s rays; … Immediately the whole population, overcome with joy mingled with fear of the heavenly vision, hastened to the Holy Church: … all with one accord, and as with a single voice, extolling Christ Jesus our Lord, the Only-begotten Son of God, the worker of wonders. … We citizens of Jerusalem, therefore, eyewitnesses of this astonishing miracle, have paid, and shall further pay to God, the Universal King, and to the Only-begotten Son of God, fitting adoration joined to thanksgiving.”
“They had the evidence of their own senses that the holy faith of Christians is not based on the persuasive arguments of philosophy but on the revelation of the Spirit and power (cf. I Corinthians 2:4); it is not proclaimed by mere human beings but testified from heaven by God himself.“
Saint Cyril (315-386) was bishop of Jerusalem when this miracle happened. Having read this letter, emperor Constantius renounced, deeply moved by the divine sign, the so-called “Arian heresy“ which he had followed and returned to the orthodox teaching.
The Arian heresy
A certain priest by the name of Arius taught a heresy which Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, also called Saint Athanasius the Great, vehemently combatted. This heresy spread in the Church and led to controversies and schism throughout several decades during the 4th century. The Councils of Nicaea (325) and of Constantinople (381) were dealing with this issue.
The “Arian heresy“ was the doctrine that the Son is not of the same substance as the Father, thereby denying the Most Holy Trinity of God and the divine nature of Jesus Christ. Here is how the dictionary of the website Catholic Culture describes the Arian teaching, and Saint Athanasius the Great‘s role in fighting it:
“(…) Its author was Arius (256-336), a priest of Alexandria, who in 318 began to teach the doctrine that now bears his name. According to Arius there are not three distinct persons in God, co-eternal and equal in all things, but only one person, the Father. The Son is only a creature, made out of nothing, like all other created beings. He may be called God but only by an extension of language, as the first and greatest person chosen to be divine intermediary in the creation and redemption of the world.
Catholic Culture Dictionary: Arianism, published on: https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=31968
In the Arian system, the logos or word of God is not eternal. There was a time when he did not exist. He is not a son be nature, but merely by grace and adoption. God adopted him in prevision of his merits, since he might have sinned but did not. In a word, instead of being God he is a kind of demiurge who advanced in virtue and merit and thus came to be closely associated with the Father. But his nature is not of the same substance as the Father’s.
Boldly anti-Trinitarian, Arianism struck at the foundations of Christianity by reducing the Incarnation to a figure of speech. If the logos was created and not divine, God did not become man or redeem the world, and all the consequent mysteries of the faith are dissolved.
The First Council of Nicaea was convoked in 325 to meet the Arian crisis. Since the signature lists are defective, the exact number of prelates who attended the council is not known. However, at least two hundred twenty bishops, mostly from the East but also from Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Italy, signed the creed that affirmed the divinity of Christ and condemned Arius as a heretic. ‘We believe,‘ the formula read, ‘in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father; God from God, light from light, true God from true God; begotten, not created, consubstantial (…) with the Father.‘ The soul of the council was St. Athanasius (296-373), Bishop of Alexandria, whose resolute character and theological insight were the main obstacle to the triumph of Arianism in the East. (…)
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, pray for us!