On this Saturday of the fourth week of Easter, the Church celebrates Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, bishop and Doctor of the Church. The pairing of readings could not be more fitting for him. In the first reading, Paul and Barnabas turn the page on a refusal and open the Gospel to the nations: “We turn to the pagans… I have made you a light to the nations.” In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to Philip with great tenderness: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Athanasius spent his whole life carrying these two convictions together — that the face of Jesus is, fully and without remainder, the face of God; and that this Good News belongs to all the nations of the earth.
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: “Because you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him, and you have seen him.” Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you, I do not say of myself; the Father, who dwells in me, does his own works. Believe me: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. If not, believe at least because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do; and even greater than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14, 7-14)
In the first reading (Ac 13, 44-52), we are still at Antioch of Pisidia. The next sabbath, “almost the whole town gathered to hear the word of the Lord.” But where there is light, there is also resistance. Some, seeing the crowds, are filled with jealousy and contradict Paul. The two missionaries do not retreat into bitterness. They take a step that is, in fact, a turning point in the whole history of evangelisation: “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and do not judge yourselves worthy of eternal life, behold, we now turn to the pagans. For thus the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light to the nations, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’” And then comes a sentence we should never forget: “The pagans were filled with joy… and the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” Persecution had not extinguished their joy; on the contrary, the wider the door of the Gospel opened, the more abundant the joy became.
The Gospel (Jn 14, 7-14) lifts this missionary movement to its source. We are still in the upper room. Jesus has just told his disciples that no one comes to the Father except through him. Philip then speaks for all of us: “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus answers with what may be the most astonishing single sentence in the whole Gospel: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?” And he goes further: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do; and even greater works, because I am going to the Father.” The full divinity of Christ is not a remote dogma. It is the foundation of every mission, of every prayer in his name, of every work greater than ours that he promises to accomplish through us.
This is the heart of Athanasius. Born around 296 in Alexandria, he was a young deacon at the Council of Nicaea in 325, where the Church definitively confessed that the Son is “of the same substance” as the Father — truly, fully God, not a sublime creature. He spent the rest of his life defending that confession at the cost of every comfort. Made bishop of Alexandria at thirty-three, he was exiled five times by emperors who preferred the Arian compromise: it was easier, in the corridors of imperial power, to say that Jesus was a high creature than to say he was God. Athanasius refused. He spent more than seventeen years in exile in total. He hid in the desert with the monks of Saint Antony — whose Life he then wrote, giving the universal Church one of its great spiritual books. He stood, as one historian put it, “alone against the world” — not from stubbornness, but because he had seen, in the face of Jesus, the face of the Father, and he could not unsee it.
Athanasius gave us a sentence that has become a heartbeat of Christian spirituality: “The Son of God became man so that man might become God.” Strip it of every misunderstanding, and you find the most consoling truth there is: because Jesus is fully God and fully man, the union he creates between God and us is real, total, transforming. We are not merely improved; we are divinised. Drawn into the very life of the Trinity. Made adopted children of the Father. The whole Christian life rests on the divinity of Christ; remove it, and there is no resurrection, no Eucharist, no possible communion with God. Athanasius understood this with crystalline clarity, and he paid for it with his peace, his comfort, and most of his episcopate.
In the spirituality of the Child of Bethlehem, this is profoundly familiar. The God who came small, poor, hidden in the manger is fully God. The little baby in Mary’s arms is the One in whom “all things hold together,” the One whose face is the Father’s face. The smallness of Bethlehem does not diminish his divinity; it reveals it. Only a love that is fully divine can choose to be that small. And it is from this contemplated face — small, hidden, real, and divine — that the missionary draws all the courage needed to face the contradictions of the world. Like Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, like Athanasius in his exile, the disciple who has truly seen Christ’s face does not need anyone’s applause. He has been filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
Today’s liturgy invites us to a quiet but decisive examination. Have I taken the time, recently, to look at the face of Christ — in prayer, in the Eucharist, in Scripture, in the poor — long enough to recognise the Father in him? Am I willing, like Paul and Barnabas, to keep my joy intact when I am contradicted? Am I willing, like Athanasius, to remain faithful to a truth I have seen, even when the world prefers a softer, less divine Jesus? The risen Lord is doing today, through us, the works he announced — sometimes greater than our own — because he is in the Father and the Father is in him. May we be his disciples, with joy.
Prayer of the Day
Lord Jesus, true God and true man, you who let yourself be seen with the eyes of Philip and revealed the Father in your own face, open our eyes today. Through the courageous prayer of Saint Athanasius, strengthen in us the faith of Nicaea — the joyful confession that you are of the same substance as the Father, not a creature, not a metaphor, but God for us. Make us missionaries who, like Paul and Barnabas, turn to the nations without bitterness when one door closes, and find their joy renewed at every wider threshold. Fill us with the Holy Spirit, so that we may do the works you do, and bring the light of your face to the ends of the earth. Amen.
For Meditation
- “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” When did I last take the time to look at Christ’s face long enough to recognise the Father in him?
- Like Paul and Barnabas at Antioch, am I able to receive contradiction without bitterness, and to find my joy renewed at the wider threshold the Lord opens?
- Saint Athanasius stood almost alone for the divinity of Christ. Where, today, am I called to a quiet but firm faithfulness to a truth I have seen?
