Saint Hilary

"They didn't know who they were." This is how Hilary summed up the problem with the Arian heretics of the fourth century. 

Hilary, on the other hand, knew very well who he was -- a child of a loving God who had inherited eternal life through belief in the Son of God.  He hadn't been raised as a Christian but he had felt a wonder at the gift of life and a desire to find out the meaning of that gift.  He first discarded the approach of many people who around him, who believed the purpose of life was only to satisfy desires.  Human beings should rise above desires and live a life of virtue,  the philosophers said.  But Hilary could see in his own heart that humans were meant for even more than living a good life. 

If he didn't lead a virtuous life, he would suffer from guilt and be unhappy.  His soul seemed to cry out that merely living a moral life wasn't enough to justify the enormous gift of life.  So Hilary went looking for the One who gave the gift of life.  He was told many things about the divine -- many that we still hear today: that there were many Gods, that God didn't exist but all creation was the result of random acts of nature, that God existed but didn't really care for his creation, that God was in creatures or images.  One look in his own soul told him these images of the divine were wrong. 

At that point, Hilary tells us, he "chanced upon" the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.  When he read the verse where God tells Moses "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14), Hilary said, "I was frankly amazed at such a clear definition of God, which expressed the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in words most suited to human intelligence."  In the Psalms and the Prophets he found descriptions of God's power, concern, and beauty.  For example in Psalm 139, "Where shall I go from your spirit?", he found confirmation that God was everywhere and omnipotent. 

Then he found the Gospels and read John's words including "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God..." (John 1:1-2). From John he learned of the Son of God and how Jesus had been sent to bring eternal life to those who believed.  Finally his soul was at rest. "  No longer did he look upon the life of this body as troublesome or wearisome, but believed it to be what the alphabet is to children... namely, as the patient endurance of the present trials of life in order to gain a blissful eternity."  He had found who he was in discovering God and God's Son Jesus Christ. 

After becoming a Christian, he was elected bishop of Poitiers in what is now France by the laity and clergy. He was already married with one daughter named Apra (who is also a saint). 

Not everyone at that time had the same idea of who they were.  The Arians (a schismatic group in the Church at the time) did not believe in the divinity of Christ and they had a lot of power including the support of the emperor Constantius.  This resulted in many persecutions.  When Hilary refused to support their condemnation of Saint Athanasius he was exiled from Poitiers to the East in 356.   

Being exiled from his home and his duties gave him plenty of time to study and write.  He learned everything he could about what the Arians said and what the Church answered and then he began to write.  "Although in exile we shall speak through these books, and the word of God, which cannot be bound, shall move about in freedom."  The writings of his that still exist include On the Trinity, a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and a commentary on the Psalms.  He tells us about the Trinity, "For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used: -- to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible.  He fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding."

After three years the emperor kicked him back to Poitiers, because, we are told by Sulpicius Severus, the emperor was tired of having to deal with the troublemaker, "a sower of discord an a disturber of the Orient."  But no one told Hilary he had to go straight back to his home and so he took a leisurely route through Greece and Italy, preaching against the Arians as he went.

In the East he had also heard the hymns used by Arians and orthodox Christians as propaganda. These hymns were not based on Scripture as Western hymns but full of beliefs about God.  Back at home, Hilary started writing hymns to help teach and spread the  true faith.  His hymns are the first in the West with a known writer.

Hilary wasn't not fighting a war of words, but a battle for the eternal life of the souls who might hear the Arians and stop believing in the Son of God, their hope of salvation. 

The death of Constantius in 361 ended the persecution of the True Church.  Saint Hilary died in 367 or 368 and was proclaimed a doctor of the Church in 1851.