Saints
“Catechist of the Holy City”
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Patriarch of Jerusalem · Catechist · Father of the Second Council
Patriarch of Jerusalem for thirty-five years, three times exiled by the Arianizing emperors for confessing the consubstantial Faith. His twenty-three Catechetical Lectures, preached to the catechumens in the Anastasis at the Holy Sepulchre in the years before his consecration, are the foundational fourth-century introduction to the Christian Mysteries.
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- Born
- c. 315 (Jerusalem)
- Reposed
- March 18, 386 (Jerusalem)
- See
- Jerusalem
- Feast
- March 18
His life
Cyril was born around the year 315 in or near Jerusalem, in the years just after Constantine's restoration of the Holy City and the building of the great church of the Anastasis at the Holy Sepulchre. He was raised in the Faith, ordained presbyter under his predecessor Maximus around 343, and during his presbytery preached the twenty-three Catechetical Lectures that have come down to us: eighteen pre-baptismal lectures to the catechumens during Great Lent (the Procatechesis and Catecheses I-XVIII), and five mystagogical lectures to the newly-baptized during Bright Week (the Mystagogical Catecheses).
He was consecrated Patriarch of Jerusalem around the year 350, in succession to Maximus. His relations with the Arianizing metropolitan of Caesarea (Acacius) were difficult from the start: Cyril held the Nicene Faith without ambiguity, and the more Acacius pressed his Arianizing sympathies, the more clearly Cyril preached against them. Acacius secured his first deposition in 357 on a pretext about church property he had sold to feed the poor during a famine. Cyril was sent into exile in Tarsus.
He was restored by the Council of Seleucia in 359, exiled again under Constantius II, restored under Julian, exiled a third time under Valens, and finally restored under St. Theodosius the Great in 378. Of the thirty-five years between his first consecration and his death, he had spent some sixteen in exile.
He came to the Second Ecumenical Council in 381 as one of the long-suffering elders of the Nicene Faith. The Council's Synodical Letter, written the following year to Pope Damasus, explicitly names him and vindicates the canonicity of his ordination against the slanders of the earlier decades: "the right reverend and most religious Cyril, who was some time ago canonically ordained by the bishops of the province, and has in several places fought a good fight against the Arians."
He died at Jerusalem on March 18, 386, after thirty-five years on the throne of the Holy City. The Catechetical Lectures are one of the four or five most-used patristic texts in catechetical instruction in the Eastern Orthodox Church to this day, and the Mystagogical Catecheses are the principal patristic witness to the fourth-century practice of the Holy Mysteries at Jerusalem: the Eucharist, the Holy Baptism with triple immersion and chrismation, and the Liturgy of St. James.
In his own words
Make thy fold with the sheep; flee from the wolves; depart not from the Church.
After the invocation, the Bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the Wine, the Blood of Christ.
Though the Prophet makes the explanation, we cannot yet understand it even as we read. But if we cannot understand the throne which he has described, how shall we be able to comprehend Him who sits thereon, the Invisible and Ineffable God? To scrutinise then the nature of God is impossible; but it is in our power to send up praises of His glory for His works that are seen.
Holy St. Cyril of Jerusalem, pray to God for us.
