Easter Time
Memorial White
Bishop and Doctor of the Church
From Ordo Veri · An essay
Why will we let a heart speak, but not a kidney? On the bodily language of Scripture, and what can disappear when a translation makes it easier.
The daily readings and book editions are in preparation.
The editors
Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria for forty-five years, and spent seventeen of them in exile. Five times emperors sent him away for holding to the faith of Nicaea: that the Son is true God, of one being with the Father.
Rufinus tells how Bishop Alexander, looking out over the shore one day, saw boys playing at church, and the boy Athanasius baptising the others as a bishop would. Alexander questioned them, judged the baptisms valid, and took the boy into his care.
Under the emperor Julian he fled up the Nile. When his pursuers came alongside his boat and asked whether Athanasius was near, the answer came back: he is not far off. They rowed on.
He died in his own city on the second of May, 373.
The 1962 Calendar keeps the same feast today, of the third class. Read the day in the 1962 calendar