March: Day 18: Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem

 

March: Day 18:
Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem
 
(The Commemoration of the Miraculous Appearance of the Life-Giving Cross in Heaven Serves To Confirm our Faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, whose memory is celebrated today, lived in the 4th century A.D. During the days of his episcopacy he witnessed special manifestations of God's mercy to the Christian race.

When the Christian Church, with the accession of Constantine the Great to the Roman throne, was freed from persecution that had lasted for almost three hundred years, new enemies appeared within Christian society, the heretics, the Arians, who falsely taught about the Divine dignity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Although the Arians were exposed at the First Ecumenical Synod and Arius himself was exiled, after the death of Constantine the Great, his son Constantius clearly patronized the heretics. Many Orthodox shepherds of the Church, including Saint Cyril, were persecuted and deposed from their episcopal thrones. The danger to the Orthodox Church was very great, but the Lord did not abandon His help to the zealots of truth.

At that time, for the strengthening of the Orthodox and the rebuke of the erring, a miraculous sign of the Holy Life-Giving Cross appeared in the heavens in Jerusalem. "During the holy days of Pentecost," thus described this sign in a letter to the Emperor by Saint Cyril, an obvious witness of it, "about the third hour of the day a very large cross appeared in the sky, composed of light and stretching over Golgotha to the Holy Mount of Olives. Not one, or only two saw it, but it was very clearly visible to the entire population of the city. And not quickly, as some would have thought, did this vision pass, but for many hours the cross was clearly visible above the earth, surpassing the rays of the sun with its lightning-like radiance. The entire population of the city, seized with fear and at the same time joy from this vision of God, immediately flocked to the church in crowds - young and old, men and women, people of all ages, city residents and strangers, Christians and pagans who had arrived from other places - all unanimously, as if with one mouth, glorified the miracle-working Jesus Christ, our Lord, the Only Begotten Son of God."

Some time later, under the same Saint Cyril, Jerusalem witnessed another manifestation of the power of God to the shame of the enemies of the Christian faith and to the triumph of the cross of the Lord. Emperor Julian the Apostate, wishing to offend Christian feeling and shake the faith of Christians in the immutability of the words of the Savior about the Old Testament Temple, contrary to the prediction of Jesus Christ that this Temple would be destroyed and not one stone would be left upon another (Luke 21:6), intended to rebuild the Jewish Temple and gave the Jews an allowance from the state treasury to accomplish this work. But as soon as the Jews laid the foundation of the building, a strong earthquake occurred, which not only threw out the stones that were again laid in the foundation, but also destroyed the remains of the ancient building. When they began to work again, a fire suddenly descended from heaven, scattering the workers and burning all the building tools and materials, and the signs of the cross were imprinted on the clothes of the Jews, which they could not even wash off. Thus miraculously disgraced, the enemies of Christ had to abandon their enterprise, having proved before the whole world the immutability of the words of the Savior and the immutability of His judgment regarding the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem.

II. May the remembrance of such wondrous events that took place in the days of Saint Cyril in Jerusalem serve us, brethren, to strengthen our faith in Christ the Savior, Who is true God and true man, incarnate and made human for our sake and our salvation from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is the true God, namely the second person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God. This sacred truth lies at the foundation of the entire New Testament; it is 1) proclaimed by Christ the Savior Himself, 2) preached by His disciples, and 3) confessed by the Holy Church, beginning with the Apostolic Age.

a) Christ the Savior calls Himself the only begotten Son of God, considers faith in His Divinity a necessary condition for salvation (John 3:16, 36, 6, 47) and presents it as the work of God: "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He sent" (John 3:29);

– calls God the Father His Father (John 15:1, 15);

– points to His consubstantiality with the Father (John 10:30, 14, 10:11) and perfect equality with Him (5:17, 19:21, 16:15, 17:10), and with such consubstantiality and equality of the Son with the Father "no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and to whomever the Son wills to reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27; John 8:19);

– assimilates to Himself the Divine properties, namely – eternity (John 8:58, 17:5), self-existence (5:26), omnipresence (3:13, 14:24; Matt. 18:20), omnipotence, expressed in the performance of miracles, which no one else did (John 15:24), and showed that

– God has power not only over the body, but also over the soul (Matthew 9:6);

– as God, Jesus Christ gives His disciples the power of miracles (Mark 16:17, 18; Luke 10:19), promises them wisdom (Luke 21:15), encourages them with the hope of receiving what they ask for (John 14:13, 14:16, 23), comforts them with the promise of the Holy Spirit (15:26);

– Christ the Savior constantly and with particular force proves His Divinity to the Jews and in doing so refers to the testimonies of: John the Baptist, who testified to the truth (5:33), calling Jesus Christ the Son of God, who came down from heaven and is above all (3:31–36); the Heavenly Father, who said of Him: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (5:37; Matt. 3:17); His miraculous deeds (John 5:36) and the Old Testament scriptures (v. 39).

– Finally, the Lord confirms the truth of His Divinity by His glorious resurrection from the dead.

b) The Apostle Peter, on behalf of all the apostles, confessed this faith in the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ before the Lord Himself, when, to His question: "Who do you say that I am?" – he answered: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:15, 16). On this faith, as on the cornerstone, the Lord promised to unshakably found His Church (v. 18).

c) What the Lord Jesus Christ taught, what the apostles preached, that was believed by the ancient Christian Church, the keeper of the true apostolic tradition, recognizing the Divinity of the Lord, and expressed its faith in the sayings of shepherds and teachers, in the confessions of martyrs, in the symbols used in local churches, and in the definitions of synods.

Here it is enough to recall only that all the holy martyrs sealed with their blood their faith in the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ. During the first three centuries, Christianity experienced constant persecution - first from the Jews, and then from the pagans. All the sufferers, beginning with the first martyr, Archdeacon Stephen, who before his death confessed the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:56), joyfully went to death for the name of Christ, and responded to the admonitions of the pagans to renounce Christ with the nation-wide glorification of Him as the true God. Nothing could defeat the indestructible courage of these confessors of Christ; they endured the most cruel tortures in silence, arousing with their patience unfeigned amazement in their tormentors, as one ancient writer, contemporary with the persecutions, notes: "Children and our women, inspired by patience, do not care about crosses, tortures, beasts, and all the horrors of suffering," and addressing the pagans, it is expressed: "You do not understand, wretched ones, that there is not a single person who would wish to undergo suffering without sufficient motivation, nor could endure torment without God's assistance."

III. Let every Christian firmly and unwaveringly hold on to the faith in Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of God. Without this faith there is no salvation, but eternal and inevitable destruction.

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.