Athanasius
From The Shattering of Loneliness: ‘Athanasius does not maintain that all sensual impulses lead to God. There is a distinction to be drawn between our heavenly, ‘logical’ longing and our earthbound, ‘illogical’ desire. Yet the fundamental principle holds: any authentic longing, any longing that, even implicitly, points towards eternity, is a possible path towards God. Dying, Christ declared a sentence of death on death. Death alone is dead. In Christ, we go beyond what is ‘natural’ so that our nature, one with the Word, is no longer what it used to be. The condition of newness, which corresponds to what at first we were, makes of us, too, possible epiphanies. ‘Our arguments’, says Athanasius, ‘are not composed merely of words, but have the proof of their truth in experience itself.’ On this basis he concludes by professing the principal result of the Word’s incarnation: ‘He became human that we might become divine.’’
The Church celebrates the feast of St Athanasius today, 2 May.
