A classically Anglican celebration of Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Three classically Anglican reasons to rejoice on the commemoration of Saint Hilary of Poitiers.

1. In the midst of January, with the Sundays after the Epiphany sustaining the Church's joy in Our Lord Jesus Christ, "who in substance of our mortal flesh manifested forth his glory: That he might bring all men out of darkness into his own marvellous light" (Epiphany preface, Prayer Book as Proposed in 1928), commemorating Saint Hilary of Poitiers is a means of renewing our vision of the grace and truth of the Incarnation. In his discussion of the union of divine and human natures in the Incarnate Word, Richard Hooker turns to Saint Hilary's De Trinitate: 

 "He which in himself was appointed", saith Hilary, "a Mediator to save his Church, and for performance of that mystery of mediation between God and man, is become God and man, doth now being but one consist of both those natures united, neither hath he through the union of both incurred the damage or loss of either, lest by being born a man we should think he hath given over to be God, or that because he continueth God, therefore he cannot be man also, whereas the true belief which maketh a man happy proclaimeth jointly God and man, confesseth the Word and flesh together" (LEP V.53.2).

With Hooker, then, let us drink deeply of this confession of the Incarnate Lord, and through the example, teaching, and fellowship of Saint Hilary be renewed in a joyful confession of Creedal truth.

2. The 'Homily of Salvation' in  Book of Homilies turns first to Saint Hilary when it quotes representatives of "all the old and ancient authors, both Greeks and Latins", placing Hilary in the illustrious company of Saint Basil and Saint Ambrose. The words of Hilary, fides enim sola justificat ('faith only justifieth'), recall us in this Epiphany season to the heart of the mystery of the Incarnation celebrated at Christmas and the Epiphany, and proclaimed in the Creed: "Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven".  In the words of the 'Homily of Salvation':

But this saying, That we be justified by faith only, freely and without works, is spoken for to take away clearly all merit of our works, as being unable to deserve our justification at God's hands, and thereby most plainly to express the weakness of man, and the goodness of God, the great infirmity of ourselves, and the might and power of God, the imperfectness of our own works, and the most abundant grace of our Saviour Christ, and therefore wholly to ascribe the merit and deserving of our justification unto Christ only, and his most precious blood shedding.

It is this truth - "a most wholesome Doctrine" (Article XI) -  which animates the Church's worship, is made present in the Sacraments, and assures us on our earthly pilgrimage: it is God alone who saves us.

3. In his True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Cranmer quotes Saint Hilary on the gift of the Lord's Body and Blood in the holy Eucharist:

If the Word was made verily flesh, and we verily receive the Word being flesh in our Lord’s meat, how shall not Christ be thought to dwell naturally in us? Who, being born man, hath taken unto him the nature of our flesh, that cannot be severed, and hath put together the nature of his flesh to the nature of his eternity, under the sacrament of the communion of his flesh unto us ... Christ have taken verily the flesh of our body, and the man that was verily born of the Virgin Mary is Christ, and also we receive under the true mystery the flesh of his body, by means whereof we shall be one, (for the Father is in Christ, and Christ in us).

Cranmer declares that Saint Hilary's words do not imply "the natural and corporal presence" of the Lord's Body and Blood but, rather, teach the gift and truth of the sacramental presence:

And as the union between Christ and us in baptism is spiritual ... so likewise our union with Christ in his holy Supper is spiritual.

Mindful of Cranmer's insistence that Saint Hilary gives expression to the 'true and Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament', we can therefore say that Cranmerian liturgy coheres with Saint Hilary's statement that the One "verily born of the Virgin Mary" is He who "we receive under the true mystery" of the holy Eucharist.  Indeed, Cranmer himself elsewhere echoed Hilary's affirmation:

I have written in more than an hundred places, that we receive the selfsame body of Christ that was born of the Virgin Mary, that was crucified and buried, that rose again, ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. And the contention is only in the manner and form how we receive it ... we receive Christ's own very natural body, but not naturally nor corporally.