Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!

Today our Holy Mother the Church (on the Coptic calendar) commemorates St. Athanasius the Great or the Apostolic. One of the greatest theologians of the Holy Church, St. Athanasius helped the early Church to properly articulate it's understanding of God and the purpose, power, and beauty of the incarnation of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. This great doctor of the Church is famous for having stated that “God became man so that man by grace might become God,” an articulation of what it means to be a human being that reiterated what St. Irenaeus of Lyons had stated nearly a century earlier, namely that “The Son of God was made man so that man might become son of God.”

It is in this very unity of the visible and the invisible, of the divine and the human that the dignity and beauty of humanity as God meant it to be can be found. Indeed, as the wonderful 20th century theologian St. Justin Popovic (+ 1979) once wrote: 

"[M]an is only a true man when he is completely untied with God, and in everything and every way completely lives in God, thinks in God, feels in God, acts in God, is virtuous in God, is immortal in God, is eternal in God. Only and solely in God is man a man, a true man, a perfect man, a man in whom all the fullness of the Godhead lives."

O holy St. Athanasius, pray to God for us!