Saint Hilary of Poitiers

January 13, we celebrate the feast day of Saint Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 368), Father & Doctor of the Church, bishop, confessor, writer, philosopher, theologian, preacher, defender of the faith, referred to as the “Hammer of the Arians” and the “Athanasius of the West.”

St. Hilary of Poitiers was one of the great champions of the Catholic belief in the divinity of Christ. By his preaching, his treatise on the Trinity, his part in the Councils, his daring opposition to the Emperor Constantius, he showed himself a courageous apostle of the truth.

Raised a pagan, he was converted to Christianity when he met his God of nature in the Scriptures. Through his studies he came to believe in salvation through good works, then monotheism .

As he studied the Bible for the first time, he literally read himself into the faith, and was converted by the end of the New Testament.
Along with his wife and his daughter (traditionally named Saint Abra), he was baptized and received into the Church. The Christians of Poitiers so respected Hilary that about 350, they unanimously elected him their bishop.

At that time Arianism threatened to overrun the Western Church; Hilary undertook to repel the disruption. When Emperor Constantius ordered all the bishops of the West to sign a condemnation of Athanasius, the great defender of the faith in the East, Hilary refused and was banished from France to far off Phrygia.

Eventually he was called the “Athanasius of the West.” While in exile he penned a 12 volume set of books devoted to exploration of the divinity of Christ and the Holy Trinity.

Finally, after four years he was permitted to return to his native land. He continued his efforts, and through prudence and mildness succeeded in ridding France of Arianism. He facilitated meetings and discussions amongst the various rifts in the church at the time, counseling patience and understanding, while never compromising the tenets of the faith.

Because of his edifying and illustrious writings on behalf of the true religion, the Church honors him as one of her doctors. St. Pius IX proclaimed him a doctor of the Church. A favorite motto of St. Hilary was Ministros veritatis decet vera proferre, “Servants of the truth ought to speak the truth.”

Prayer:

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we may rightly understand and truthfully profess the divinity of your Son, which the Bishop Saint Hilary taught with such constancy.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Saint Hilary of Poitiers, pray for us