This weekend, since it falls within the octave of the Feast of the Ascension, we not only celebrate this great feast but also remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, the Council of   Nicaea, held in 325 CE. This Council is, perhaps, the most important of all the Councils of the Church since it truly began the process of defining the Christian religion in all of its fullness.

I believe that it is fitting that we celebrate these two events together since Nicaea asserts our belief that Jesus, the Christ, is truly God and truly man and his last act on earth, His Ascension, clearly shows us that the journey of human life is meant to be an ascension to the Heavenly Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit. We would not have this understanding of the meaning and purpose of life if it were not for our belief in the divinity of Jesus and our belief that, after His resurrection from the dead, He ascended into heaven where He is preparing a place for us. Think about the image of His ascension.

For all this to make any sense, however, Jesus had to be experienced as being alive – His followers actually saw Him after His death and burial. Then they had to sense His leaving and understand His words of going before them into the next life.

It is interesting that, even though His followers had these experiences, it took hundreds of years for the Church to find the real words to express the fact that Jesus IS God. The reason why this was such a struggle, I believe, is that they had to find words to express the fact that the One God they worshiped somehow is composed of three individual persons in one nature, that is in One Godhead. It was the ideas of Greek philosophy that allowed them to find the words to truly express this belief. Those words were formulated at the First Council of Nicaea. The followers of Jesus knew, since they heard Jesus talk about one God, that they had to find words to express the oneness of the Godhead and yet allow for the plurality of the Persons of the Godhead. They did not, and realized that they could not, return to a form of polytheism – the belief that there are many gods and that they are all separate.

It is my hope that all of my readers come to sense the truly radical breakthrough in human thought that the Christian mystery of the Trinity has brought to humankind.