March 18, 2022 (March 18th Feast Day)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Church Father and Doctor (315 – 386 A.D.)
St. Cyril lived during the reign of Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, in 340. His formidable and pious education led him to the priesthood. His learning attracted the attention of his bishop St. Maximus who entrusted him with the instruction of catechumens. At the death of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cyril succeeded him in 350 as the bishop of Jerusalem and fought for the dogmas of the Apostles and early Fathers. However, Akakios the Arian, who held the throne of Ceasaria-in-Palestine, tyrannically banished Cyril from Jerusalem.
Eleven years later, Cyril was allowed to go back only to find Jerusalem ravaged by heresy and strife. He attended the Council at Constantinople in 381 where the Nicene Creed and orthodoxy triumphed and Arianism was finally condemned. Cyril was rehabilitated at the same Council which cleared him of all previous rumors and commended him for fighting “a good fight in various places against the Arians.” Sixteen of his thirty-five years as bishop he spent in exile.
The works of St. Cyril include a sermon on The Pool of Bethsada, a Letter to the Emperor Constantius, three small fragments and the famous Catecheses. The Catecheses contains numerous catechetical lectures, which are among the most precious remains of Christian antiquity. They include an introductory address, eighteen instructions delivered in Lent and five in Easter to those preparing for Baptism. It is in this work that St. Cyril alludes to three comings of Christ:
“We do not preach only one coming of Christ, but a second as well, much more glorious than the first. The first coming was marked by patience; the second will bring the crown of a divine kingdom.
In General, what relates to our Lord Jesus Christ has two aspects. There is a birth from God before the ages, and a birth from a virgin at the fullness of time. There is a hidden coming, like that of rain on fleece, and a coming before all eyes, still in the future…he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. Our Lord Jesus Christ will therefore come from heaven. He will come at the end of the world, in glory, at the last day. For there will be an end to this world, and the created world will be made new.”
The Church Father and Doctor St. Cyril provides us with the expression, “the hidden coming,” that would be interpreted in the middle ages as the period that spans “from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world.” Cyril’s “hidden coming” would later be interpreted only as the intermediary time of the institutional Church, and is rediscovered in the writings of the Church Doctor St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
(“The Splendor of Creation”, Reverend Father Joseph Leo Iannuzzi)