Troparion in Tone 1
With all reverence let us praise the light of the world,
the great orator
and champion of the Mother of God;
for by his fiery teachings he burned the
heresy of Nestorius.
Wherefore let us cry to him: O divine Cyril,
intercede
with Christ to strengthen the Orthodox Faith.
St. Cyril was Patriarch of Alexandria at a pivotal point in history.
He had
to defend the Church from three main attacks. He contended with the Novationists and drove them along with their bishop from the city. The
Novationists were the fundamentalists of their day. They held to a high
moral standard (being more strict than the Apostle Paul), but did not
provide for forgiveness and restoration of those who might fall. The second
attack was from the Jews of the city who were jealous of the ascendancy of
Christians in what had always been their city. They killed Christians both
secretly and by public crucifixion. St. Cyril finally persuaded the Emperor
to drive the Jews from the city. While that was the bloodiest battle of his
career, he is best remembered for his role in quashing the heresy of
Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople. He presided at the 3rd Ecumenical
Council at Ephesus, also representing Pope Celestine of Rome at his request.
There Nestorius was anathematised and exiled to the eastern edge of the
Empire by the Emperor. Cyril finished his days in peace and fell asleep in
the Lord in 444.
This icon is by the hand of an iconographer who wishes to be anonymous*. It
is from the refectory of Christ Our Saviour Carpatho-Russian Orthodox
Seminary, Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
St. Cyril lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria from 378 to 444.
According Lionel R. Wickham:
The patristic understanding of the Incarnation owes more to Cyril of
Alexandria than to any other individual theologian. The classic picture of
Christ the God-man, as it is delineated in the formulae of the Church from
the Council of Chalcedon onwards, and as it has been presented to the heart
in liturgies and hymns, is the picture Cyril persuaded Christians was the
true, the only credible, Christ. All subsequent Christology has proceeded,
and must proceed, by way of interpretation or criticism of this picture; it
is the standard by which interpretations of Christ as God's eternal Son and
Word made man and incarnate are judged, the reference-point for differing
pictures... Only Augustine (if the Reformation may be allowed to count as a
consequence of following to their conclusions his leading thoughts about
divine grace and human freedom) has had a comparable significance...
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, p. xi)
But Cyril himself believed that he was merely articulating what the Fathers
of the Church had passed on to him regarding the significance of Christ's
incarnation. Or as Cyril puts it:
The view we take of our Saviour's dispensation is the view of the holy
fathers who preceded us. By reading their works we equip our own mind to
follow them and to introduce no innovation into orthodoxy.
(First Letter to Succensus, 1, quoted in Cyril of Alexandria: Select
Letters, p. 71)
Wickham summarizes Cyril's Christology below:
{In the person of Chirst} a man has not become God; God has become man.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, p. xxxiv)
For if man's creation, his present condition, and future hope are all bound
up with the divine grace which is Christ, it will not do to think of Christ
as a good man or a very good man, an inspired man or a very inspired man, an
important or a very important example of divine grace. It will not do to
explain the Incarnation as a union of wills dependent upon the essentially
transitory and fragile responsiveness of the human subject in Christ. Grace
cannot depend upon anything, least of all upon the waverings of the best
even of human wills. Grace must be unconditional and the Incarnation a
binding of the Son of God with man in a union stronger than, because more
basic than, any human act or choice.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, p. xxxv)
{The Incarnation} is the descent of the eternal Word of God into human
conditions and limitations in order radically to alter and restore them,
without annihilating them. God remains God and his manhood is manhood still,
but now charged with divine power and capable of restoring to fullness of
life the believer who shares in it sacramentally.
(Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters, p. xxxiii)
