The Second Festal Letter, for Easter 330

Once again, my brothers and sisters, Easter has come, and gladness with it. Once again the Lord has brought us to this season, so that, when we have been nourished with his words as our custom is, we may keep the feast as we ought. Let us celebrate it, then, as a heavenly joy, together with those saints who once proclaimed a feast like it and were examples to us of a way of life in Christ. For they were not only entrusted with the charge of preaching the gospel. If we look into it, we will see, as it is written, that its power was displayed in them. “So be followers of me,” he wrote to the Corinthians. Now the apostle’s command urges all of us, for the commands he sent to individuals he laid at the same time on every person in every place, since he was “a teacher of all nations in faith and truth.” And in general the commands of all the saints urge us on in the same way, as Solomon uses proverbs, saying, “Hear, my children, the instruction of a father, and pay attention so as to know understanding. For I give you a good gift; do not forsake my word. For I was an obedient son to my father, and loved in the sight of my mother.” For a just father brings up his children well when he is diligent in teaching others in keeping with his own upright conduct. Then, when he meets with opposition, he need not be ashamed at hearing it said, “You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?” Instead, like the good servant, he may both save himself and win others. And so, when the grace entrusted to him has been doubled, he may hear, “Good and faithful servant, you have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Lord.” [a]

So let us, as is fitting, at all times but especially in the days of the feast, be not hearers only but doers of the commandments of our Savior. Then, having imitated the conduct of the saints, we may enter together into the joy of our Lord which is in heaven, which does not pass away but truly lasts. Evildoers have deprived themselves of it, and what remains to them as the fruit of their ways is sorrow and distress, and groaning under torment. Let a person see what such people come to be like. They do not bear the likeness of the way of life of the saints, nor of that right understanding by which humankind at the beginning was rational and in the image of God. Instead, to their disgrace, they are compared to beasts without understanding. Because they become like them in unlawful pleasures, they are spoken of as lustful horses. And for their craftiness, their errors, and their sin laden with death, they are called a “brood of vipers,” as John says. Having fallen in this way, and crawling in the dust like the serpent, with their minds set on nothing beyond visible things, they count these things good. They delight in them, and serve their own lusts and not God. [d]

Yet even in this state the Word, who loves humankind and came for this very reason, to seek and find what was lost, tried to hold them back from such folly. He cried out, saying, “Do not be like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding, whose jaws you hold in with bit and bridle.” Because they were careless and imitated the wicked, the prophet prays in spirit and says, “You are to me like the merchants of Phoenicia.” And the avenging Spirit protests against them in these words: “Lord, in your city you will despise their image.” So, being changed into the likeness of fools, they sank so low in their understanding that by their excessive reasoning they even likened the divine Wisdom to themselves, thinking it was like their own arts. Therefore, “claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of the corruptible image of man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. That is why God gave them over to a debased mind, to do the things that are not fitting.” For they did not listen to the prophetic voice that rebuked them, saying, “To what have you likened the Lord, and with what have you compared him?” Nor did they listen to David, who prayed about people like these and sang, “All who make them are like them, and so are all who put their trust in them.” Being blind to the truth, they looked on a stone as God, and so, like senseless creatures, they walked in darkness. As the prophet cried, “They hear indeed, but do not understand; they see indeed, but do not perceive. For their heart has grown fat, and with their ears they hear heavily.” [f]

Now those who do not keep the feast remain like this to the present day. They put on a show and invent names for feasts, but they bring in days of mourning rather than of gladness, “for there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.” And as Wisdom says, “Gladness and joy are taken from their mouth.” Such are the feasts of the wicked. But the wise servants of the Lord, who have truly put on the man that is created in God, have received the words of the gospel. They take as a command to everyone the one given to Timothy, which says, “Be an example to the believers in word, in way of life, in love, in faith, in purity.” They keep the feast so well that even unbelievers, seeing their good order, may say, “God is truly among them.” For just as whoever receives an apostle receives the one who sent him, so whoever follows the saints makes the Lord his end and aim in every respect, just as Paul, being a follower of him, goes on to say, “as I also am of Christ.” For first there were our Savior’s own words. From the height of his divinity, speaking with his disciples, he said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Then too, when he poured water into a basin, tied a towel around himself, and washed his disciples’ feet, he said to them, “Know what I have done. You call me Master and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If, then, I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, so that as I have done to you, you also should do.” [g]

Oh, my brothers and sisters, how can we admire the Savior’s loving-kindness enough? With what power, with what a trumpet, ought a person to cry out in praise of these benefits of his! For not only are we to bear his image; we are also to receive from him an example and pattern of a heavenly way of life. As he has begun, we are to go on. When we suffer, we are not to threaten; when we are insulted, we are not to insult in return. Instead we are to bless those who curse us, and in everything to entrust ourselves to God, who judges justly. Those who are of this mind, and shape themselves by the gospel, will be sharers in Christ and imitators of the apostles’ way of life. Because of this they will be counted worthy of the praise with which Paul praised the Corinthians when he said, “I praise you because in everything you remember me.” After that, there were men who used his words but chose to hear them as suited their lusts, and dared to twist them, such as the followers of Hymenaeus and Alexander, and before them the Sadducees, who, as he said, “made shipwreck of faith” and scoffed at the mystery of the resurrection. Because of them he went straight on to say, “And as I have handed traditions on to you, hold them fast.” That means, in fact, that we should think nothing other than what the teacher has handed on. [i]

For those wicked men did not only pretend in outward form, putting on sheep’s clothing, as the Lord says, and looking like whitewashed tombs. They also took those divine words into their mouths while inwardly they nursed evil intentions. The first to put on this appearance was the serpent, the inventor of wickedness from the beginning, the devil, who in disguise talked with Eve and at once deceived her. But after him and with him come all the inventors of unlawful heresies. They do appeal to the Scriptures, but they do not hold the views the saints have handed down. They take the Scriptures as human traditions and go astray, because they do not rightly know them or their power. That is why Paul rightly praises the Corinthians, because their views agreed with his traditions. And the Lord most justly rebuked the Jews, saying, “Why do you also break the commandments of God for the sake of your traditions?” For they changed the commandments they had received from God to suit their own understanding, preferring to keep human traditions. And about such people, a little later, the blessed Paul gave directions again to the Galatians, who were in danger of this, writing to them, “If anyone preaches to you anything other than what you have received, let him be accursed.” [j]

For there is no fellowship at all between the words of the saints and the fancies of human invention. The saints are servants of the truth, preaching the kingdom of heaven. But those who are carried the opposite way have nothing better to do than eat, and they think their end is to cease to be, and they say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” That is why the blessed Luke rebukes the inventions of men and hands down the accounts of the saints, saying at the beginning of the Gospel, “Since many have presumed to write accounts of those events of which we are assured, as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were witnesses and servants of the Word, it has seemed good to me also, who have followed them all from the first, to write them accurately and in order for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth about the things in which you have been instructed.” For what each of the saints received, they hand on without change, to confirm the teaching of the mysteries. The divine word wants us to be their disciples. They by right should be our teachers, and to them alone must we pay attention, for of them alone is “the saying faithful and worthy of all acceptance.” They were not disciples because they heard from others; they were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, and what they heard from him they have handed down. [k]

Now some of them have told of the wonderful signs our Savior performed, and have preached his eternal Godhead. Others have written of his birth in the flesh from the Virgin, and have proclaimed the festival of the holy Passover, saying, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” So we, each of us and all together, and all the churches in the world, are to remember, as it is written, “that Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to the gospel.” And let us not forget what Paul handed on when he declared it to the Corinthians. I mean his resurrection, by which “he destroyed the one who had the power of death, that is, the devil,” and raised us up together with him. He loosed the bonds of death and granted a blessing instead of a curse, joy instead of grief, a feast instead of mourning, in this holy joy of Easter. Since it is always in our hearts, we always rejoice, as Paul commanded: “We pray without ceasing; in everything we give thanks.” So we are not slack in giving notice of its seasons, as we have received from the fathers. Again we write; again, keeping to the apostolic traditions, we remind one another when we come together for prayer; and keeping the feast in common, with one mouth we truly give thanks to the Lord. Giving thanks to him in this way, and following the saints, “we will make our praise in the Lord all the day,” as the psalmist says. So when we keep the feast rightly, we will be counted worthy of the joy which is in heaven.

We begin the fast of forty days on the 13th of the month Phamenoth, that is, the 9th of March. After we have given ourselves to fasting day after day, let us begin the holy paschal week on the 18th of the month Pharmuthi, the 13th of April. Then, resting on the 23rd of the same month Pharmuthi, the 18th of April, and keeping the feast afterward on the first day of the week, the 24th, the 19th of April, let us add to these the seven weeks of the great Pentecost, rejoicing and exulting wholly in Christ Jesus our Lord, through whom be glory and dominion to the Father in the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen. The brothers who are with me greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. Here ends the second festal letter of the holy lord Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. [l]