Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor – Readings

Commentary on 1 John 5:1-5; John 15:1-8

In the Gospel Jesus compares himself to a vine tree. The passage comes from the long discourse which Jesus has with his disciples at the Last Supper on the eve of his suffering and death. He begins by saying:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

This is the last of seven ‘I AM’ statements made by Jesus in the course of John’s Gospel.

The ‘I AM’ is the name of God, and makes one think of the time when Moses was before the burning bush from which a voice came telling him to undertake the mission of liberating his people from slavery in Egypt. But Moses objected:

If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’ (Exod 3:13-14)

In today’s passage Jesus speaks of himself as the True Vine, or rather as the main stem or trunk of the vine. On the vine there are many branches. Some of these branches are laden down with fruit, while others may not produce any fruit at all. But even the branches which bear fruit will be pruned so that they will produce even more fruit. This pruning can be identified with the trials that even the most committed of Christians is bound to experience in the living of a Christ-centred life. On the other hand, no branch can bear any fruit at all unless it is part of the vine.

It all clearly applies to our relationship with Christ. Separated from him, we are not able to bear fruit. Jesus says he is the source of all our life and of every good thing we do because:

…apart from me, you can do nothing.

A branch that becomes separated from the trunk that is Jesus will wither and die. It will only be of use for the bonfire.

Cyril, as bishop in Jerusalem, faced a good deal of ‘pruning’ in being a fruitful branch on the vine. He endured a great deal of opposition and misunderstanding, but through it all remained faithful to his Lord.

The First Reading is from the First Letter of John. This letter is very much concerned with the thinking of the Gnostics, a group of Christians who wanted to deny the reality of the material body of Christ. So today’s passage begins:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.

And the last sentence reads:

Who is it who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

In other words, it is an affirmation that Jesus is truly and fully and in every way the Son of God, who shares in himself the divine nature of God and our own human nature.

In the time of Cyril, the prevailing heresy was that of the Arians, whose position was the opposite of the Gnostics. The Arians denied that Jesus shared the divine nature with the Father and that he was only human. The reading from 1 John equally attacks both the Gnostic and Arian positions.

Let us, then, acknowledge the true divinity and the true humanity of Jesus. It is only this that gives the Incarnation its full meaning, so that Jesus becomes the Bridge linking our God with our human selves and the world in which we live. It is through Jesus that God comes to us, and through Jesus and our imitation of him that we go to God.

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Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor

Little is known of the life of Cyril before he became bishop. It is believed he was born about the year 313 or 315 AD. He was raised in Jerusalem and given a good education, especially in the Scriptures. About the year 335, he was ordained deacon by St Macarius of Jerusalem, and ordained priest about eight years later by Bishop St Maximus. He was given the task of catechising during Lent those preparing for Baptism, and during the Easter season, the newly baptised. His catechetical texts remain valuable as examples of the ritual and theology of the Church in the mid-fourth century.

About the year 350 he succeeded St Maximus as Bishop of Jerusalem. Through the nature of his conciliatory disposition, while opposed to Arianism, he was not quite ready to accept the uncompromising term homoousios (from the Greek meaning ‘consubstantial’ and indicating that Jesus shared the same divine nature with the Father).

But he distanced himself from his archbishop, Acacius of Caesaraea, who favoured the position of Arius, and Cyril favoured the so-called Eusebians who were anti-Arian. This displeased Acacius, and a council held under Acacius accused Cyril of insubordination and selling church property to help the poor. He was forced to retire to Tarsus. Then in the following year, the Council of Seleucia, at which Cyril was present, deposed Acacius.

In 360 AD, Acacius was again in control and Cyril was sent away for another year, until the accession of the emperor Julian allowed him to come back. Then in the year 367, the Arian emperor Valens banished him again. But Cyril was able to return with the accession of the emperor Gratian, and returned to find Jerusalem torn with heresy, schism and strife, and wracked with crime. Even St Gregory of Nyssa, who was sent to help, left in despair.

Cyril and Gregory both went to the (second ecumenical) Council of Constantinople, where the amended form of the Nicene Creed was promulgated. Cyril now accepted the word ‘consubstantial’. Some said it was an act of repentance, but the bishops of the Council praised him as a champion of orthodoxy against the Arians. Though not friendly with St Athanasius of Alexandria, the greatest defender of orthodoxy against the Arians, Cyril may be counted among those whom Athanasius called “brothers, who mean what we mean, and differ only about the word” (i.e. ‘consubstantial’).

He remained in his post until his death in 386. In 1883, St. Cyril was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII.

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