May 2, 2026 – Memory of s. Athanasius
H O M I L Y
In Jesus' preaching there were several calls to radical detachment and radical commitment. Invitation to abandon father, mother, sister, brother, even oneself in order to seek the only thing that mattered, to buy the precious pearl.
Those among the first Christians who wanted to adopt such a search and such a renunciation as a permanent way of life could find in the religious culture of the time, especially in the baptist movement to which John the Baptist belonged and in which Jesus inserted himself through his baptism, a mode of expression that corresponded to something deeply rooted in human nature itself.
And so, radical ascetic tendencies that were widespread at the time of Jesus came into contact with the Gospel, and were gradually transformed, during the first few centuries of the Church, through a process corresponding to what would now be called inculturation. Monastic life, when it found its clearly defined Christian form, at the beginning of the fourth century, could be considered as one of the first and best achieved form of inculturation.
That those -- at times wild -- currents of asceticism could be channeled into forms of authentic Christian living, was due to perceptive bishops like Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, who became patriarch precisely the year when Pachomius founded his first monastery.
In his Life of Anthony, which is not a biography in the modern sense, but a treatise on monastic life, Athanasius wanted to do two things. He had understood that the crowds of ascetics who fled to the desert could either be a wild movement that would disrupt the Church or could be a grace for the Church. He therefore wanted on the one hand, in his responsibility as Pastor of the Church of Egypt, to give a spiritual guidance to the monks, and to give a spiritual orientation to their movement, and, on the other hand, to convince the other bishops who, as a whole, were not favorable at all to the monastic movement, that this could be a beautiful example of Christian living.
He was successful on both fronts. And because he was successful, the monastic tradition has remained alive in the Church. It has been handed down through the centuries; and, through great intermediaries as Benedict and Robert, Alberic and Stephen, has come down to us as a personal call. We can say that it is because of Athanasius that we are here today, celebrating as a monastic community.
May this Eucharist be a sacrifice of praise to the Lord, for the grace of our monastic vocation.