15 June 2025

St. Cyril of Jerusalem was born in 315 AD. This was two years after the Emperor Constantine passed the Edict of Milan ensuring tolerance for Christians and other religious people throughout the Empire and ten years before the famous Council of Nicaea.

The first General Council of the Church wrestled with a heresy called Arianism which denied the divinity of Jesus. Those who followed Arius considered Jesus to be the Son of God in the sense that he was created by God but  was not co-equal with God.

Cyril became the Bishop of Jerusalem in 351 AD and throughout his ministry, he had difficulty with those who continued to support the views of Arius. In fact, he was exiled from his diocese on several occasions by the supporters of Arianism. But he didn’t deviate from the doctrine propounded at Nicaea when he was a mere  ten year old.

He is famously remembered for his sermons on baptism. On reading his ‘Lectures on the Christian Sacraments’, I was immediately struck by the liturgical context of baptism. He was writing in the very early days of public buildings designated for the worship of God.

When the baptismal candidate enters the baptistery, he faces West. This is where the sun sets and darkness falls. This is the symbolic place of the Devil and the darkness of sin and death. Facing West, he renounces the Devil and all his works.

Facing East, he takes off his own clothes and puts on the baptismal garment. He puts off his own flesh and takes upon himself the new life of Christ. He is immersed into the water three times – figuratively remembering the three days of Christ’s burial.

He is then anointed with oil on his forehead, ears, nostrils and breast. ‘The oil is symbolically applied to thy forehead and thy other senses;’  writes St. Cyril, ‘and while thy body is anointed with visible ointment, thy soul is sanctified by the Holy and life-giving Spirit.’

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