10 Saint Hilary Things That Caught My Eye Today (Jan. 13, 2016)

Stained glass of today's Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church, who defended the Divinity of Christ https://t.co/qAP4k7ikTM

— Fr Lawrence Lew OP (@LawrenceOP) January 13, 2016

2. From Fr. Roger Landry:

St. Hilary of Poitiers was born into a very well-off pagan family. Eventually through study and following an ethical conscience, he saw that polytheism was untenable, that there could only be one God. He began to study the alternatives. Eventually he found the Bible and was fascinated by God’s self-description to Moses at the burning bush (“I am who am”) as well as the sage advice God gave throughout his interaction with his people. When he got to the New Testament, he was won over by Jesus and asked for baptism as a married adult and father of a daughter. After his baptism, he continued his study and prayer to get to know God better. Four years after his baptism, incredibly, he was asked by the people of Poitiers to become their bishop, even though he would need to be continent with his wife, even though he would need to leave what he was doing, even though he would need to receive the sacramental triple crown of the three grades of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. He tried to refuse the office not considering himself up to the task, but those who had chosen him only grew in admiration of his humility. So he assumed the office. It was a time when the Church was in chaos because of the Arian heresy, which was very popular in France. He took to study, writing, preaching and prayer to combat the heresy, and he did it so effectively that he was banished by the emperor Constantius from France for three years to Phrygia. In Phrygia, however, he didn’t wallow. Instead he prayed and wrote, and those treatises in defense of God’s divinity are still essential for us today. In just 18 years as a bishop, in just 22 years as a Christian, he incredibly became a doctor of the Church. And one can only become a doctor when one is “doctus.” One can only [become] a teacher when he is first taught. And because in prayer and through the continuation of prayer in study of Sacred Scripture, St. Hilary had repeatedly said, “Speak, Lord! Teach, Lord! for your servant is speaking,” he became truly learned with the Word of God that he fearlessly and persuasively announced to others. He said that he wanted to use all his faculties to pass on to others the truth of God so that they come, like he had, to true love of Him. His life was a commentary on how one, having received the Lord’s mercy, is moved from within with a desire to share it, and he shared not only in Christ’s great care and love for the poor, sick and needy, but also for those in ignorance and error. He taught — and through his hallowed writings, teaches still.

3. St. Hilary brilliantly, patiently defended truth of Christ

4. By Saint Hilary, via the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours today:

I am well aware, almighty God and Father, that in my life I owe you a most particular duty. It is to make my every thought and word speak of you.

In fact, you have conferred on me this gift of speech, and it can yield no greater return than to be at your service. It is for making you known as Father, the Father of the only-begotten God, and preaching this to the world that knows you not and to the heretics who refuse to believe in you.

In this matter the declaration of my intention is only of limited value. For the rest, I need to pray for the gift of your help and your mercy. As we spread our sails of trusting faith and public avowal before you, fill them with the breath of your Spirit, to drive us on as we begin this course of proclaiming your truth. We have been promised, and he who made the promise is trustworthy: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Yes, in our poverty we will pray for our needs. We will study the sayings of your prophets and apostles with unflagging attention, and knock for admittance wherever the gift of understanding is safely kept. But yours it is, Lord, to grant our petitions, to be present when we seek you and to open when we knock.

There is an inertia in our nature that makes us dull; and in our attempt to penetrate your truth we are held within the bounds of ignorance by the weakness of our minds. Yet we do comprehend divine ideas by earnest attention to your teaching and by obedience to the faith which carries us beyond mere human apprehension.

So we trust in you to inspire the beginnings of this ambitious venture, to strengthen its progress, and to call us into a partnership in the spirit with the prophets and the apostles. To that end, may we grasp precisely what they meant to say, taking each word in its real and authentic sense. For we are about to say what they already have declared as part of the mystery of revelation: that you are the eternal God, the Father of the eternal, only-begotten God; that you are one and not born from another; and that the Lord Jesus is also one, born of you from all eternity. We must not proclaim a change in truth regarding the number of gods. We must not deny that he is begotten of you who are the one God; nor must we assert that he is other than the true God, born of you who are truly God the Father.

Impart to us, then, the meaning of the words of Scripture and the light to understand it, with reverence for the doctrine and confidence in its truth. Grant that we may express what we believe. Through the prophets and apostles we know about you, the one God the Father, and the one Lord Jesus Christ. May we have the grace, in the face of heretics who deny you, to honor you as God, who is not alone, and to proclaim this as truth.

Ministros veritatis decet vera proferre (Ministers of the truth ought to speak the truth) ~ Saint Hilary, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

— Fr James Bradley (@FrJamesBradley) January 13, 2016

[Pray for priests.]

“There is no space where God is not; space does not exist apart from Him." –St. Hilary of Poitiers

— Franciscan U (@FranciscanU) January 13, 2016

7. St Hilary schoolchildren starve for a day to help the homeless

"He is the best student who does not read his thoughts into the book, but lets it reveal its own." saint hilary of portiers

— fr stan fortuna cfr (@frstan) January 13, 2016

9. From a 2007 Pope Benedict audience about him:

Fidelity to God is a gift of his grace. Therefore, St Hilary asks, at the end of his Treatise on the Trinity, to be able to remain ever faithful to the baptismal faith. It is a feature of this book: reflection is transformed into prayer and prayer returns to reflection. The whole book is a dialogue with God.
I would like to end today’s Catechesis with one of these prayers, which thus becomes our prayer:
“Obtain, O Lord”, St Hilary recites with inspiration, “that I may keep ever faithful to what I have professed in the symbol of my regeneration, when I was baptized in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. That I may worship you, our Father, and with you, your Son; that I may deserve your Holy Spirit, who proceeds from you through your Only Begotten Son… Amen” (De Trinitate 12, 57).

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