In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
My beloved, welcome to the third part of this series entitled The Eucharist in the mind of St. Cyril of Alexandria. Now, if you've attended the last couple of lectures, you are fully aware of what it is that we are trying to do here. You have seen how it is that it is important for us to speak first and foremost of the understanding of the Eucharistic theology in the mind of St. Cyril by first understanding what the human condition was. And we spoke about this; we spoke about how it is that the Lord had a very specific intention for the human being when He created us in His image and in His likeness.
We also spoke about how it is that the fall of humanity has impacted us greatly and how it is that, because of the fall, the human being has now inherited death instead of life, has been alienated and separated from God and no longer living in union with Him, and how it is that we are now fallen into a state of corruption when God intended for us to be in a state of incorruption. So, my beloved, let's go ahead and take a look as to what it is that we previously discussed in the second lecture.
So, in the last lecture, the fallen human condition was discussed and the necessities for how it is that God reconciles us back to Himself was also discussed. We talked about the effects of the fall; we spoke about falling into corruption; we spoke about how death entered into the world through the envy of the devil and we saw the scriptural and the liturgical references for that. We spoke about how it is that we were alienated from God and, in the process, have lost the indwelling of the all-holy Spirit of God, which was given to us, according to St. Cyril, when God breathed into the human being the breath of life. We also spoke about the divine dilemma. We spoke about what was God to do facing this situation where the human being now can no longer see Him or could remember Him, that the image of God was completely distorted in the human being. What was God to do save for sending His only begotten Son to become incarnate so that He can condescend and become like all of us.
Now we're about to enter into the reality of discussing the very next steps. Today, it's important for us to come to the following realization that specifically for the person of St. Cyril of Alexandria, the way that he views the person of Jesus Christ, so his Christology, is intimately tied into his Eucharistic theology. So the way that he sees Christ and the way that he discusses the nature of Christ, the natures of Christ, how it is that He is perfectly divine and how it is that he is perfectly human and how both of those form the one person of the Lord Jesus Christ, his understanding of Christology directly impacts his understanding of what it is that we partake of in the holy Eucharist, or rather should I say, not what we partake of, but who we partake of.
So today, we're going to talk about St. Cyril's Christology and Eucharistic theology. We're going to see how it is that Jesus Christ, the God-man, in Greek, θεανθρωπος (theanthropos), the God-man in the flesh as per St. Cyril's teachings. We're going to see the attributes of the Lord Jesus Christ are the very same ones that are found in the Eucharist, because the Eucharist is the very own flesh of the Word incarnate. Let's go ahead and dive right into this, my beloved.
So St. Cyril, he begins by explaining something very important. He begins to tell us that the Son of God that we believe in is the Son of God that is defined to us the Holy Church. He speaks about how it is that the holy fathers in the Council of Nicaea gave us a faith, of how it is that they described the Son of God as light from light, true God of true God, begotten not created of one essence with the Father and he begins to reference the teachings of the Church and he begins to reference the teachings of the holy apostolic and Orthodox Creed that was handed down to us through the fathers and the Council of Nicaea.
Now, he refers to this, so that he can say that we are not the ones who are making this up. We have received something from the Holy Church and we hold fast to it. And I think this is beautiful. I think it's beautiful to see how the fathers themselves referred to those who came before them. They received the tradition that they hand down and we hold on to what it is that has been given to us the same way that they held on to what had been given to them. And so, what the Lord gave to His disciples and His disciples gave to all of the apostles and to all of the bishops of the early Church, they handed down to the fathers and we continue to pass it on from generation to generation. Let's see what St. Cyril of Alexandria says in one of his first letters in the volumes of letters that St. Cyril has written. He says:
''But we into whose minds the light of God has shone, having chosen to think what is incomparably better than their nonsense [here, their nonsense is those who are the heretics, those who are making things up as they wish], and following the faith of the holy Fathers, say that the Son, in a divine and ineffable manner... We confess that the Son is light from light, God from God according to nature, equal in glory and equal in operation, the image and brightness, being equal in every respect whatsoever, and inferior in no manner.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 1)
To St. Cyril, the Son is of one essence with the Father. Here, obviously, this argues so many points against the Arian heresy where Arius believed that the Son was not equal to the Father, that the Son was a creature, that the Son was not always with the Father; he says there was a time when the Son was not, and so on and so forth. But this also is an argument against those who would believe that St. Mary did not give birth to the Word of God incarnate. So here, he is speaking against both heresies at the same time, our belief of the Son of God, our belief of who Jesus Christ is, so our Christology, is that truly He is of one essence with the Father and that the Word became man and dwelt among us.
And now St. Cyril is going to make this very clear. He was not simply a human being that was born of St. Mary (of the Holy Theotokos) and then God overtakes this person. No! He was always the one who was begotten of the Father before all ages. He was always the Word of God incarnate in the womb upon conception of the Holy Virgin Theotokos, St. Mary.
So, St. Cyril references to us John, chapter 1 and in that John, chapter 1, he references verse 14, which is a beautiful and very powerful verse that the evangelist gives to us to make very clear who it is that we believe is among us today in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, St. John says:
''And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.'' (John 1:14) - [New Revised Standard Version]
And so, what does he tell us. He's telling us that the Word of God, the Logos, took on flesh; He became what we are; He became a human being for our sakes. So St. Cyril, he comments on this and he says:
''Now, the inspired Scripture says that the Word of God was made flesh, that is, that he was united to flesh which had a rational soul.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 1)
He made that flesh His own; He became one with this body that He took on for our sakes. And so now, that body becomes His own. It did not belong to another man and He overtook it; He did not indwell another man's mind; He did not overtake another's soul. No! He made that very body His own. And so, because that body becomes His own, that is going to influence dramatically and very importantly what St. Cyril says about the Eucharist.
Let's continue speaking about this for just a moment, because when we say that St. Cyril took... when the Lord Jesus Christ ─ not St. Cyril ─ when the Lord Jesus Christ took on flesh as the Word of God, the only begotten Son of the Father, when He was incarnate and became man just as we are, that this says something about how it is that He became everything that we are, so he can give us all that He is. This is going to be very important when we discuss how it is that He's given us the solution to our death, our corruption and our alienation.
St. Cyril says something beautiful as he writes to Nestorius. Now between St. Cyril and Nestorius, there were several letters that were sent back and forth where St. Cyril patiently tried to educate Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople, by trying to show him the error of his ways. And this is in the Letter to Nestorius, which is letter number four among the collection of letters. So St. Cyril is writing to Nestorius and he says:
''The Word [became] flesh is nothing else except that he partook of blood and flesh just as we are. He made our flesh his own, and was born man from a woman without
having thrown aside his divinity and his being begotten of God the Father, but, in the assumption of [the] flesh, he remained what he was.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 4: Letter to Nestorius)
He continues to be perfectly divine, but He really did take on all that we are. And so, because He partook of blood and flesh just as we are, that body is His and that body is the same as the body that we have, which means that His incarnation is a personal union of that body that He took on and His divinity. He made it His. And this is extremely important because if His divinity and His humanity are now united in that person of the Lord Jesus Christ, then this is going to shape what we believe about the Eucharist. Because just as the body that He had that bled, that cried, that hungered, that needed to rest, that same body is now the body that He offers to you and me and He says: Take, eat of it, all of you; take, drink of it, all of you.
This is the same very body of the Word of God incarnate. And because it was united to His divinity, then all the attributes that the Lord Jesus Christ had when he walked among us on this earth are also found in this Eucharistic offering, because we believe that this is truly His body and His blood.
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