Sunday Homily, 15 June 2025 – Fr Paul Rowse, OP

There were the most remarkable scenes when the Roman Emperor arrived at the Council of Nicaea in 325.  It was Constantine who had summoned the bishops together.  The ailing Pope Sylvester I sent two priests to represent him.  Otherwise, more than 200 bishops arrived at the small town in western Turkey.  There were some legendary figures among them, including Bishop Alexander of Alexandria and his secretary, Deacon Athanasius, who had been battling Arianism for years.  Arianism is that false belief that the Son of God is not co–eternal with his Father; Arians wrongly believed him to be the Father’s first creation.

The Emperor Constantine arrived at the Council of Nicaea on 14 June 325, 1700 years ago yesterday.  It’s amazing to think that his predecessors had persecuted the Church in the name of the so–called gods of Rome.  Instead of worshipping the false gods, Constantine honoured the true bishops.

Towards the end of the Council, Constantine gave a banquet to celebrate his twentieth anniversary as Emperor.  At the end of the night, as he was leaving, he dispensed gifts to the bishops: a deed of land to one, rich fabrics to another, funds to third, precious metals and priceless objects were delivered into holy hands.

There was an especially moving moment that evening, when Constantine met the bishops who had survived the persecution.  We’re told he honoured with a kiss the mutilated bodies of those heroic men.  Tenderly did Constantine kiss the empty eye socket of this one and that; he gently petted mangled limbs and caressed stubbed fingers.  As one contemporary writer put it, the sight was prescient of the heavenly banquet.

Famously, the Council of Nicaea produced the first version of the Creed, which we still use; it was filled out by a later one.  Constantine was credited with adding a single Greek word to it: homoousios – in English: consubstantial.  The Son is consubstantial with his Father, that is, they have the same substance.  The Son is what the Father is, true God.  Now, Constantine was a soldier, a general, a governor, and a king; he was no theologian.  I’ve been to enough church meetings to know that sometimes experts get things through because they word up the superior.  In this case, we may suspect Constantine was literally worded up by someone really knowledgeable about these things.  And so, homoousios, consubstantial, enters the Church’s orthodox vocabulary to describe what the Son has with his Father.  In this way, the peace of the Empire, such as it was, was used to bring peace to the Church.

The Creed with its careful language wasn’t the end of the division.  Arianism persisted for a few centuries more, resurfaced during the Protestant reformation, and persists in disguise in some religious groups.  So, Nicaea and its Creed wasn’t the end; but it was the beginning of the end for the universal Church, the Church of all nations.  Thanks be to God, 1700 years later we’re still saying the same words as the Nicene bishops gave us: we believe the Son begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.

Now that we’ve celebrated the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, and also the Spirit’s descent and his empowering of the Church, we know that God is a unity.  He is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  The Father is the origin of all things; the Son comes from him without being created; their Holy Spirit who abides in us and in the Church is the seal on their claim on us.

One day, please God, we shall have eternal life and so enter more perfectly into the life of the Blessed Trinity.  On that day, we shall not be gods, but live with and in those Persons who together are one God.  For now, we abide in them even as they abide in us.

All glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,

as he was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.  Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest