In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
My beloved, welcome now to what is the second part of the first lecture of our deep dive into the understanding of the Holy Eucharist through the mindset of St. Cyril of Alexandria. If you've attended the first part with us, you have heard us speak about the importance of understanding what God's intention was for the human being and so we spoke about the primordial man and how it is that God created us with very specific intentions for us.
And now today, in this second part of the first lecture, what we're really going to discuss is what it means to be created in God's image and likeness and more specifically how God created us with the intention of union and to be in a state of incorruption: union and incorruption. Let's go ahead and get right into it.
What St. Cyril of Alexandria seems to be saying here is that when he speaks of the breath of life, what he is really saying is that God placed in us His very own Holy Spirit. In his commentary on the Gospel of St. John, St. Cyril says two things that are very profound. He says:
''...what is the breath of life but plainly the Spirit of Christ.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
What he gave to humanity here was His own Holy Spirit. We call the Holy Spirit the life giver. In the third hour prayer, we say: ''Oh heavenly king, the comforter, the spirit of truth who is present everywhere and fills all.'' We call Him the spirit of truth; we call Him the life giver; we call Him our heavenly king. And now here, St. Cyril is teaching us and telling us that is very much the Holy Spirit which brings us to life, because there is no such thing as life outside of God. And so God places inside the human being his very own spirit. Humanity was created so we can be in union with God, so God can dwell within us. Not be outside of us, not so that we have to search for him, but rather that he is always within us, indwelling us.
He says, in the same commentary, that:
''God breathed into his face the breath of life, that is, the spirit of the Son, since he is life along with the Father, holding all things [into] existence... the creator fixed upon it the Holy Spirit, that is, the breath of life through which he shaped it into [his own] archetypical beauty.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 2)
My beloved, it's very clear that, according to St. Cyril of Alexandria, we were created for union; we were created to be one with God; we were created so that God could be within us and that we can be within him, so that we can participate in the life of the Holy Trinity by having the Holy Spirit indwelling us. And this very breath of life that is mentioned in the very second chapter of all of Scripture, Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, when he breathed into him the breath of life, St. Cyril of Alexandria interprets this as the Holy Spirit now indwelling the human being.
So now humanity is created in the image and the likeness of God and the Holy Spirit helps us identify what it means to be created like this. Again in his commentary of St. John, the Gospel of St. John, St. Cyril says the following:
''Through the Holy Spirit he [who is Adam] was sealed in the divine image, saying, ''And he breathed into his face the breath of life.'' At the same time the Spirit put life into the one who had been formed, he also imprinted his stamp on him in a manner appropriate to God.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
What is he saying? He's saying that, after creating us in His image and likeness, that after giving us what we need to bear the image of God, what seals the deal or what finally completes God's perfect creation is when He places Himself within us by having the Holy Spirit indwell us. He continues and says:
''[And] Thus God, the most excellent craftsman, after he completed the earthly rational creature [which is the human being], [He] gave him the saving command.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
The saving command was:
'' 28 ...be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it...'' (Genesis 1:28)
He gave him this command. He told him: this is all yours so go ahead and show your dominion; go ahead and be like me; grow in my likeness; choose to live through me, with me, in me, and I in you. This was the command that was given to the human being.
''[And so] He was in the garden, as it [was] written, still keeping the gift [the gift here of the Holy Spirit], and was illustrious in the divine image of his maker through the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him.'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
St. Cyril is very clearly teaching us that the primordial human being, the human being before death, was created not only in God's image and likeness but this image and likeness was sealed with the Holy Spirit. We were meant to always carry the Spirit of God within us. We were meant to always be in union with God.
And so now, I want us to understand how it is that it's not only St. Cyril who sees this. St. Athanasius, who came before him in the 4 th century, would teach that we were made to be in a relationship with God, to know God intimately. And he says here in his writings against the heathens, St. Athanasius says:
''...made, through his own Word our Savior Jesus Christ, the human race after his own image, and constituted man able to see and know realities by means of this assimilation to Himself, giving him also a conception and knowledge even of His own eternity,...'' (St. Athanasius)
He's saying that by allowing us to be created in his image, we were capable of knowing things that were beyond us; we were capable of imagining eternity; we were capable of understanding immortality; we were capable of having an inclination towards those things that are good, those things such as life, such as eternity, such as God himself.
''...in order that, preserving his nature intact, he might not ever either depart from his idea of God, nor recoil from the communion of the holy ones;... (St. Athanasius)
Through this creation of being in God's image and likeness, we can stay connected to God; we would never forget God. As Scripture says, Adam walked in the garden with God; he spoke to God. Even after his fall, it says that the Lord spoke to Adam and told him: where are you, Adam? And when he saw him, he had a conversation with him. We were meant to be in this proximity with God, never forgetting Him, never taking our eyes off of him. This was the state of the human being before the fall. St. Athanasius continues and says:
''...but having the grace of Him that gave it, having also God's own power from the Word of the Father, he might rejoice and have fellowship with the Deity,...'' (St. Athanasius)
Imagine what this means. Fellowship here is the word κοινωνία (kinonía). Imagine being in communion, in fellowship with God.
''...living the life of immortality, unharmed and truly blessed.'' (St. Athanasius)
This was what the human being was created to be. This was what the human being looked like before sin and death entered into the world, before the fall happened. And as you can see, if St. Athanasius spokes this, then clearly St. Cyril heard this and learned from him, also being a patriarch of Alexandria.
So we continue and we realize also that the human being was not only created for union, but the human being was also created in incorruption. And so here St. Cyril speaks to us about how humanity is in a state of incorruption in and through God. He says the following in his commentary on the Gospel of St. John, he says:
''A human being is an animal that is both rational and composite [so, composite here], of a soul... and this perishable earthly flesh...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
That he is both a soul and body. It's what we call psychosomatic: we have the ψυχή (psyhí), which is the soul, and we have the σώμα (sóma), which is the body.
''[And] When humanity was made and brought into being by God, it did not have incorruptibility or indestructibility from its own nature...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
The nature of the human being was something that was created from dust and so it was finite. Being created from matter, from something that was created, all things that are created will fade away into uncreatedness if left alone; it will fade away into nothing. And so, because it was created, it has the potential to die. So he says here that it did not have incorruptibility or indestructibility from its own nature. So what is St. Cyril about to say. Saying that we took on that attribute because we had God within us, because God placed Himself in us through the Holy Spirit.
''...These belong essentially to God alone...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
And he is right: only God is truly incorruptible; only God is truly indestructible; only God is truly infinite and almighty. But He allows us to participate in all of those things when he creates us in his image and likeness and when He places the Holy Spirit within us. And all of this, he says, it was sealed by the Spirit of life.
''...It was sealed by the Spirit of life, and by its relation to the divine [in our relationship with God], it gained the good that is above its nature...'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
Our nature limits us. Human nature could easily fall away into death; human nature has the potential to fall into corruption. Human nature has its flaws: it's not God. We are created; we are not creator. And so because of this, we are now capable, and he says it here beautifully, it gained the good that is above its nature. We can now attain this level of incorruption, this level of immortality to embrace life eternally. Why? Because God has granted us this grace, this gift of the Holy Spirit. And so God created us so we can connect to those things that are even above our nature, as long as we held on to Him in relationship and we had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. St. Cyril says it again:
''He breathed into his face [it says] the breath of life, and the man became a living soul [truly alive].'' (St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, Volume 1)
It's beautiful to see how it is that the early Church and the early Church Fathers are capable of very slowly unraveling all of this beauty to us, to show us what the human being was meant to be.
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