The Third Festal Letter, for Easter 331

Once again, my beloved brothers and sisters, the day of the feast draws near to us. Above all others it should be given to prayer. The law commands that it be kept, and it would be an unholy thing for us to pass over it in silence. For we have been held under restraint by those who afflict us, so that because of them we might not announce this season to you. Yet thanks be to “God, who comforts the afflicted,” that we have not been overcome by the wickedness of our accusers and silenced. Obeying the voice of truth, we cry aloud together with you in the day of the feast. For the God of all has commanded, saying, “Speak, and the children of Israel are to keep the Passover.” And the Spirit urges us in the psalm, “Blow the trumpet at the new moons, on the solemn day of your feast.” And the prophet cries, “Keep your feasts, O Judah.” I do not send you word as though you did not know. I announce it to those who know it, so that you may see that although men have separated us, God has made us companions, and we come to the same feast and worship the same Lord continually. And we do not keep the festival as people who observe days, for we know that the apostle rebukes those who do so in the words he spoke: “You observe days, and months, and times, and years.” Rather, we count the day solemn because of the feast, so that all of us who serve God in every place may together be pleasing to God in our prayers. For when the blessed Paul announced that a gladness like this was near, he did not announce days but the Lord, for whose sake we keep the feast, saying, “Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed,” so that all of us, contemplating the eternity of the Word, may draw near to serve him. [a]

For what else is the feast but the service of the soul? And what is that service but prolonged prayer to God and unceasing thanksgiving? The unthankful go far from these, and they are rightly deprived of the joy that springs from them, for “joy and gladness are taken from their mouth.” Therefore the divine word does not allow them to have peace: “For there is no peace for the wicked, says the Lord.” They toil in pain and grief. So the Gospel did not grant forgiveness in the sight of the Lord even to the man who owed ten thousand talents. For he too, after being forgiven great things, forgot kindness in small ones, so that he paid the penalty for the former debt as well. And that was just, for having himself received kindness, he was bound to be merciful to his fellow servant. The man who received the one talent, wrapped it in a cloth, and hid it in the ground was likewise thrown out for his unthankfulness, and heard the words, “You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I did not scatter. You ought then to have put my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received my own. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one who has the ten talents.” For of course, when he was required to hand back to his master what belonged to him, he should have acknowledged the kindness of the one who gave it and the value of what was given. The giver was not a hard man; if he had been, he would not have given anything in the first place. Nor was the gift useless and empty, for then the master would not have found fault. The giver was good, and the gift was able to bear fruit. So, just as “whoever holds back grain at seed time is cursed,” according to the divine proverb, so whoever neglects grace and hides it without tending it is rightly thrown out as wicked and unthankful. That is why the master praises those who increased their talents, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Lord.” [d]

This was right and reasonable, for, as the Scripture declares, they had gained as much as they had received. Now, my beloved, our will ought to keep pace with the grace of God and not fall behind. Otherwise, while our will stays idle, the grace given us may begin to depart, and the enemy, finding us empty and bare, may enter into us, as happened to the man spoken of in the Gospel from whom the devil had gone out: “For having gone through dry places, he took seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and returning and finding the house empty, he lived there, and the last state of that man was worse than the first.” For leaving virtue makes room for the unclean spirit to enter. There is also the apostle’s command that the grace given us should not go to waste. For what he wrote particularly to his disciple he presses on us through him, saying, “Do not neglect the gift that is in you. For whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but the paths of the lazy are strewn with thorns.” So the Spirit warns a person beforehand not to fall into them, saying, “Break up your fallow ground; do not sow among thorns.” For when a person despises the grace given him and at once falls into the cares of the world, he hands himself over to his lusts. And so in the time of persecution he stumbles and becomes altogether unfruitful. The prophet shows the end of such negligence, saying, “Cursed is whoever does the work of the Lord carelessly.” For a servant of the Lord should be diligent and careful, and more than that, burning like a flame. Then, when he has destroyed all fleshly sin by a fervent spirit, he may be able to draw near to God, who, in the words of the saints, is called “a consuming fire.” [f]

Therefore the God of all, “who makes his angels spirits,” is a spirit, “and his ministers a flame of fire.” That is why, at the departure from Egypt, he forbade the multitude to touch the mountain where God was giving them the law, because they were not of this kind. But he called the blessed Moses to it, as one fervent in spirit and having grace that could not be quenched, saying, “Let Moses alone draw near.” Moses went into the cloud too, and when the mountain was smoking he was not harmed. Rather, through “the words of the Lord, which are choice silver refined in the earth,” he came down purified. So the blessed Paul, wanting the grace of the Spirit given to us not to grow cold, urges us, saying, “Do not quench the Spirit.” For we will remain sharers in Christ if we hold fast to the end the Spirit given at the beginning. He said, “Do not quench,” not because the Spirit is placed in human power and can suffer anything from people, but because bad and unthankful people plainly want to quench it, since, like the impure, they persecute the Spirit with unholy deeds. “For the holy Spirit of discipline will flee from deceit, and will not dwell in a body that is subject to sin, but will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding.” Now those who are without understanding, deceitful, and lovers of sin still walk as if in darkness, not having that “light which enlightens everyone who comes into the world.” A fire like this took hold of Jeremiah the prophet, when the word was in him like a fire, and he said, “I am passing away from every place, and I cannot endure it.” And our Lord Jesus Christ, being good and a lover of humankind, came to cast this fire on the earth, and said, “And what? How I wish it were already kindled!” For, as he testified in Ezekiel, he desired a person’s repentance rather than his death. So evil was to be wholly burned up in everyone, and the soul, once purified, would be able to bear fruit. For the word he sows will be fruitful, some thirtyfold, some sixty, some a hundred. So, for instance, those who were with Cleopas, though weak at first from lack of knowledge, were afterward set on fire by the Savior’s words and brought forth the fruits of knowing him. The blessed Paul too, when this fire seized him, did not reveal it to flesh and blood, but having experienced the grace, he became a preacher of the Word. But not such were those nine lepers who were cleansed of their leprosy and yet were unthankful to the Lord who healed them. Nor was Judas, who received the lot of an apostle and was named a disciple of the Lord, but at the last, “while eating bread with the Savior, lifted up his heel against him, and became a traitor.” Such men receive the due reward of their folly, since their hope will come to nothing through their ingratitude. For there is no hope for the ungrateful: the last fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, waits for those who have neglected the divine light. Such, then, is the end of the unthankful. [g]

But the faithful and true servants of the Lord, knowing that the Lord loves the thankful, never stop praising him, always giving thanks to the Lord. Whether the time is one of ease or of affliction, they offer praise to God with thanksgiving, not taking account of the times, but worshiping the Lord, the God of times. So in the old days Job, who had more fortitude than anyone, thought of these things when he prospered; when he met adversity he endured patiently, and when he suffered he gave thanks. So too the humble David, in the very time of affliction, sang praises and said, “I will bless the Lord at all times.” And the blessed Paul, in all his letters, so to speak, never stopped thanking God. In times of ease he did not slacken, and in afflictions he boasted, knowing that “affliction produces endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character hope, and hope does not put us to shame.” Let us follow such men and let no season pass without thanksgiving. Especially now, when the time is one of affliction which the heretics stir up against us, we will praise the Lord, speaking the words of the saints: “All these things have come upon us, yet we have not forgotten you.” For as the Jews in those days, though attacked from the tents of the Edomites and oppressed by the enemies of Jerusalem, did not give up, but sang praises to God all the more, so we, my beloved brothers and sisters, though hindered from speaking the word of the Lord, will proclaim it all the more. Though afflicted, we will sing psalms, because we are counted worthy to be despised and to labor anxiously for the truth. More than that, though sorely troubled, we will give thanks. For the blessed apostle, who gave thanks at all times, urges us in the same way to draw near to God, saying, “Let your requests be made known to God with thanksgiving.” And wanting us always to keep to this resolve, he says, “At all times give thanks; pray without ceasing.” For he knew that believers are strong while they are busy giving thanks, and that rejoicing they pass over the walls of the enemy, like those saints who said, “Through you we will pierce through our enemies, and by my God I will leap over a wall.” At all times let us stand firm, but especially now, though many afflictions overtake us and many heretics rage against us. [i]

Let us, then, my beloved brothers and sisters, celebrate with thanksgiving the holy feast that is now drawing near to us, “girding up the loins of our minds,” like our Savior Jesus Christ, of whom it is written, “Righteousness will be the belt around his loins, and faithfulness the belt around his inmost parts.” Let each of us have in his hand the staff that came out of the root of Jesse, and our feet shod with the readiness of the gospel, and let us keep the feast as Paul says, “not with the old leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Let us trust reverently that we are reconciled through Christ, and not depart from faith in him, nor defile ourselves together with heretics and strangers to the truth, whose way of life and whose will degrade them. Instead, rejoicing in afflictions, we break out of the furnace of iron and of darkness, and pass unharmed over that terrible Red Sea. And so, when we look on the confusion of the heretics, we will sing with Moses that great song of praise, and say, “We will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously to be praised.” So, singing praises, and seeing that the sin that is in us has been cast into the sea, we pass over to the wilderness. And first purified by the fast of forty days, by prayers and fastings, discipline and good works, we will be able to eat the holy Passover in Jerusalem.

The fast of forty days begins on the 5th of Phamenoth, the 1st of March. And when, as I have said, we have first been purified and prepared by those days, we begin the holy week of the great Easter on the 10th of Pharmuthi, the 5th of April. In it, my beloved brothers and sisters, we should use longer prayers, fastings and watchings, so that we may be able to anoint our lintels with precious blood and escape the destroyer. Let us rest, then, on the 15th of the month Pharmuthi, the 10th of April, for on the evening of that Saturday we hear the angels’ message, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is risen.” Straight after that, the great Sunday receives us, I mean the 16th of the same month Pharmuthi, the 11th of April, on which our Lord rose and gave us peace toward our neighbors. When we have kept the feast according to his will, let us add, from that first day in the holy week, the seven weeks of Pentecost. And as we then receive the grace of the Spirit, let us give thanks to the Lord at all times, through whom be glory and dominion to the Father in the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The brothers who are with me greet you. I pray, brothers and sisters beloved and longed for, that you may be in good health, and that you may remember us in the Lord. Here ends the third festal letter of holy Athanasius. [k]