Voices from the Past: Meditations on the Person and Work of Christ
Cyril was born around 315 and was bishop in Jerusalem from 348. He spent much of his public life embroiled in the Arian controversy with Gregory of Nyssa, who was called on in 379 to investigate his orthodoxy but found it satisfactory. Indeed his opposition to the Arian heresy and the offence it caused to his superiors caused him much suffering and brought him into exile several times, for which faithfulness he was praised at the Council of Constantinople (381). He died 18th March 386.
Reading “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” John 20:31
If over one sinner that repents there is joy, according to the gospel, how much more shall the salvation of so many souls move the inhabitants of heaven to gladness?
As ye have entered upon a good and most glorious path, run with reverence the race of godliness. For the only-begotten Son of God is present here most ready to redeem you, saying, Come unto Me all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Ye that are clothed with the rough garmentof your offences, who are holden with the cards of your own sins, hear the voice of the Prophet saying, Wash you, make you clean, put away your iniquities from before Mine eyes: that the choir of Angels may chant over you, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered (Isaiah 1:16; Luke 15:10; Psalm 32:1).
Ye who have just lighted the torches of faith, guard them carefully in your hands unquenched; that He, who some time ago on this all-holy Golgotha opened Paradise to the robber on account of his faith, may grant to you to sing the bridal song.
Believe then that this only-begotten Son of God for our sins came down from heaven upon earth, and took upon Him this human nature of like passions with us, and was begotten of the Holy Virgin and of the Holy Ghost, and was made Man, not in seeming and mere show, but in truth; nor yet by passing through the Virgin as through a channel; but was of her made truly flesh, [and truly nourished with milk], and did truly eat as we do, and truly drink as we do. For if the incarnation was a phantom, salvation is a phantom also. The Christ was of two natures: Man in what was seen, but God in what was not seen; as Man truly eating like us, for He had the like feeling of the flesh with us; but as God feeding the five thousand from five loaves; as Man truly dying, but as God raising Him that had been dead; truly sleeping in the ship as Man, and walking upon the waters as God.
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures
