September 4, 2022 - "Saint Hilary of Poitiers"

I am continuing my series on the Doctors of the Church.  This week I am writing about Saint Hilary of Poitiers (312-67).  Hilary was born into a distinguished pagan family in the Roman province of Gaul.  After his conversion and baptism, he was elected Bishop of Poitiers around the year 350.  He organized the bishops in Gaul to resist those who were sympathetic to the teachings of Arius.  These individuals would have held that the Son of God is not co-eternal and consubstantial (homoouios) with the Father.  Others, called Semi-Arians, would have admitted that the Son was “like” (homoios) the Father, but refused to speak of consubstantiality.  Because he organized this resistance by the Bishops in Gaul, Hilary was exiled to the East by the emperor Constantius in 356.  Hilary spent three years in Asia Minor where he discovered Greek Trinitarian thought and speculation.  During this period of exile Hilary wrote his best-known work, On the Trinity, which is the only patristic source that Saint Augustine named in his own work On the Trinity. Hilary, who was back in Gaul by 360, was perhaps the first significant interpreter of Scripture and theologian of the Latin West.  He wrote a Commentary on Matthew and Tractates on the Psalms (only part of which survives).  Besides On the Trinity Hilary wrote several other works against Arianism.
 
In a Wednesday audience devoted to the life and teaching of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, Pope Benedict XVI remarked that Hilary found his starting point for his theological reflection in baptismal faith.  Pope Benedict believes that this is a particularly beautiful formula of Saint Hilary:  “God knows not how to be anything other than love, he knows not how to be anyone other than the Father.  Those who love are not envious and the one who is the Father is so in his totality.  This name admits no compromise, as if God were father in some aspects and not in others.”
 
Pope Benedict ends his catechesis on Saint Hilary by quoting one of Hilary’s prayers, which Pope Benedict hopes could become our prayer as well:
 
“Obtain, O Lord, 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.”
Finally a fun fact involving Saint Hilary of Poitiers:  Hilary Term is the name of the second academic term at the University of Oxford and the University of Dublin that runs from January to March.  It is so named because the memorial of Saint Hilary (January 13) falls during this term.  “Hilary Term” originated in the legal system during medieval times.
 
Until next week,
Fr. John