Homilies at Alexandria

It is a fitting time today to urge your piety to form with us a sacred choir and, with the holy angels, to cry out: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.” For today a child has been born to us, in whom the whole creation, visible and invisible, has obtained sure hopes of salvation. Today the supernatural childbirth is accomplished, and the pangs of the Virgin who knew no marriage are loosed. O the wonder! The Virgin gives birth and remains a virgin; she becomes a mother, and does not undergo exactly all that belongs to a mother. For the Virgin gave birth as is the law for women, but remained a virgin, as is not the law for women who give birth. Foreseeing the wonder from of old, the prophet Isaiah cried: “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” Making this clear, the evangelist said that it is interpreted “God with us.” So Mary, the Theotokos, gives birth to [Emmanuel]. The people cried out: “Behold, this is the faith! Gift of God, orthodox Cyril! This is what we sought to hear. Whoever does not say this, let him be anathema!” Then Bishop Paul said: “Whoever does not say this, and understand it, and hold it, let him be anathema from the church. So Mary, the Theotokos, has borne us Emmanuel; and Emmanuel is God made man. For God the Word, begotten of the Father before the ages ineffably and inexpressibly, in the last days is born of a woman. For having taken our nature completely, and having made the human his own from the first conception, and having prepared our body as a temple for himself, he came forth from the Theotokos, perfect God and the same perfect man. For the concurrence of two perfect natures, I mean of Godhead and of manhood, has made for us the one Son, the one Christ, the one Lord.” The people cried out: “Welcome, orthodox bishop! The worthy to the worthy!” The Christians say: “Gift of God, orthodox Cyril!” Bishop Paul said: “I knew, beloved, that I had come to an orthodox father. Therefore we worship a Trinity, not a quaternity: Father and Son and Holy Spirit. And we anathematize those who say two sons, and we cast them out of the sacred precincts of the church. So we neither say two sons, nor that Emmanuel, born of the Theotokos, is a mere man, nor that he was granted grace, like a prophet or a righteous man, more than others. ‘For in him it pleased the whole fullness of the Godhead to dwell bodily’, that is, as in his own body; for he made our body his own. On this faith the church of God is founded; on this expectation, on this rock, the Lord God laid the foundations of the church. When, then, the Lord Christ came to Jerusalem, he asked the disciples, saying, ‘Who do the sons of men say that I, the Son of Man, am?’ The apostles say: ‘Some Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ And he says: ‘You’, that is, my chosen ones, ‘tell me the false opinions, that some said Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets; but you, who have followed me three years and seen my power and the wonders, and watched me walking on the sea, who have shared my table, who do you say that I am?’ At once the chief of the apostles, the mouth of the disciples, Peter: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ ‘You are the Christ’: the twofold nature, the one made man. ‘You are the Christ’; and he did not say ‘the sons’, but ‘the Son of the living God’: he recognized also the single person. Let us, then, ask the father to set before us his usual table, and with the costly and varied dishes of the Spirit to crown the bowl of teaching, and to make us drunk with the drunkenness that is the mother of sobriety. Let us say: ‘Awake, O father; awake, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp of the Holy Spirit.’ To whom be glory and might for ever and ever. Amen.”

The other day, while speaking more combatively to your love, we were not able to bring the discourse to an end; for the crowding of our brothers pushed us out of the arena. Come, then, stripping again for the contest, let us take up the same bouts. And let this noble father and trainer do what he once did, and do it again: let him judge the bouts. For then, with a glad face and a bright smile, he showed himself rejoicing in the contests of his child, and, waving his right hand at us like an olive branch, he made it clear that he was setting us forward and desiring the child to be proclaimed, and crowned as victor … The people cried out: “Gift of God, Cyril! You have made them all like yourself. The worthy to the worthy!” The people said: “Lord, save the father of the bishops! Welcome, orthodox bishop, teacher of the world! He who believes thus is loved. Great praiser of a great teacher!” Bishop Paul: “Let us return, then, to Mary the Theotokos and to Emmanuel, born of her, God made man. For the Virgin has borne us Emmanuel, consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us according to the manhood. Otherwise how could he be called a rod from the root of Jesse? How of the seed of Abraham? How Son of David? How could this be understood: ‘From them according to the flesh is Christ, who is God over all’? And how shall we take that saying of the divine Paul: ‘Concerning his Son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our God’? So holy Mary bore Emmanuel, as we have said before, consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood; impassible according to the Godhead, passible according to the manhood. For even if God the Word makes his own the sufferings of his own body and refers them to himself, yet he himself has remained within the bounds of impassibility. Even if you hear him saying, ‘I gave my back to scourges and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn my face from the shame of spitting’, do not suppose that he suffered anything in his own nature, but rather that he made the scourges of his own body his own; for God the Word has remained impassible. But those who set themselves against the divine Scriptures and the right opinions will say to us: ‘If God the Word is impassible, unchangeable and unalterable, how did the Word become flesh?’ Hear, beloved: ‘The Word became flesh’, not by changing into flesh; for neither did God the Word change into flesh, nor did the flesh that was taken pass into the nature of the one who took it. What, then, is ‘The Word became flesh’? That is, he took flesh, and flesh not bare, but with a rational and intelligent soul, which is our complete nature. Thus the Word became flesh. I should like you to know also the meaning of the most loud-voiced John, so that you may know the force of what has been said. John the theologian, the son of thunder, who was counted worthy to recline on the Lord's breast and drew from there for us the loftier and more divine doctrines, wishes to present God's surpassing love for us. And having first said the more divine things, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made’, when he had shown him co-eternal with the Father (for we find nothing older than ‘in the beginning’; even if you run back in thought, ‘was’ is ahead of you; for no end of ‘was’ is found); when he had said these things and shown him co-eternal with the Father and creator of all, then he adds: ‘The Word became flesh’, all but saying that he who is co-eternal with the Father, and Lord and creator of all, humbled himself so far for us and for our salvation as to become flesh, so that from the meaner part of our nature he might show God's surpassing compassions toward us. ‘The Word, then’, he says, ‘became flesh.’ And he did not stop there, but added: ‘and dwelt among us’; and the second is the interpretation of the first. What is ‘The Word became flesh’? He dwelt among us, that is, in our nature. See John too proclaiming two natures and one Son. The tent is one thing, and the one who dwells in it another; the temple is one thing, and the God who dwells in it another. Attend to what is said. I did not say ‘one and another’ in the masculine, as of two persons, or two Christs, or two sons, but ‘one thing and another’, as of two natures. When, then, he had said, ‘He dwelt among us’, and proclaimed the two natures, then he added: ‘And we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten.’ He did not say ‘of two sons’, but ‘of the Only-begotten’. Isaiah, then, proclaims Emmanuel, that is, God made man. And Peter says, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’: the twofold nature and the single person of the Son. John the theologian says, ‘And he dwelt among us’: two natures and the one person of the Only-begotten. And God the Word remained impassible. For I come back to that point again; attend to what is said. He gave a share of the more divine things to the nature that was taken, but he took no share of any of the things of manhood. He walked on the sea, but with his own body. He rebuked the winds and the sea, but through his own body. A leper met him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean’; he says, ‘I will; be clean’; and the Lord's body touched him, and the disease fled, the leprosy was scraped away. He fed five thousand from five loaves, but through our body; for he took, gave thanks to the Father, broke and gave to his disciples, and the disciples to the crowd; and twelve baskets of fragments were left over. It belongs to God alone to forgive sins; again he says, ‘That you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins.’ Again he says, ‘No one has gone up into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.’ Do you see how he gave a share of the more divine things? But when you see him hungry and thirsty, labouring and sweating, handed over to Pilate, led and dragged about by the hands of executioners, in agony, praying, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’, that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, and again, ‘If it is possible, Father, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will’; when you see him impaled; when you see nails in his hands and feet, and his side pierced, then understand that God the Word has remained impassible, but makes his own all these things that happen to his own body. And to show that not even at the time of the passion did he depart from his own temple, when the Jews were staging these things against the Lord, as God he put out the ray of the sun, poured darkness over the world, tore the veil of the temple, split rocks, raised the dead. All these things he did, so that you may know that he was with the one who suffered, and made the sufferings his own, while he himself, impassible, did all things. We have set before you what is yours: for this is the teaching of the physician [?]; this is your ancestral treasure, the doctrines of the blessed Athanasius, the teachings of the great Theophilus, the pillars of orthodoxy. But since you have patiently borne with our stammerings, wait for the wisdom of the father. You have heard a shepherd's reed; hear also a most loud-voiced trumpet.” The people said: “Son of Theophilus and of Athanasius, let us hear Cyril's wisdom …” Bishop Paul said: “… stirring up the minds of us the orthodox and casting down the ranks of the opponents of the church. To God, then, let us now send up glory, now and always and for ever and ever.”

Blessed be God, who, when I first addressed you with the greeting of peace, has granted me to embrace your piety; having given peace in turn and received peace in return: peace, the cause of all good things, lovely and dear to God, which the Lord Christ has graciously given to the world through the Holy Spirit. To him be glory together with the Father, with the Holy Spirit, for …