 |
| OT Trinity Rublev |
Seventh Week in Ordinary Time Year II Monday
First Reading
2 Corinthians 1:15-2:11
Responsory 2 Cor 1:21-22; Dt 5:2.4
God firmly establishes us in Christ. He anointed and sealed us,
+ and as his pledge to us he sent his Spirit to dwell in our hearts.
V. The Lord our God made a covenant with us and spoke to us face
to face. +And as his ...
Second Reading
From a commentary by Saint Cyril of Alexandria
(In Ep. [] ad Corinthios: PG 74,921-923)
Christ is God by nature
and in truth
God the Father
makes us firm in Christ and establishes in all souls a faith that is correct
and unshakable in holding that Christ is God by nature and in truth. That is so
even if he was visibly in a form like ours, being born from a woman according to
human nature and yet being above every created thing. At any rate, when Peter confessed
his faith, saying clearly that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,
Jesus Christ our Lord replied himself, saying, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona.for
flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
For since the mystery is an enormous one, it has reasonable need of the revelation
which is from above, from the Father.
It is God,
therefore, who makes us firm in Christ, God who seals and anoints us and gives the
Spirit as the guarantee, so that it might not be obscure for us, and derived from
these things around us, that the Son is not "yes" and "no" but,
rather, is truly God and that the "yes" to all good things is in him.
God is said to seal and to anoint us, giving the guarantee of the Spirit, so that
Christ might be the one who fulfils these things in us, not in a servile way nor
as one anointing and sealing us with an alien spirit, but with the Spirit which
is his own and the Father's. For the Holy Spirit is in both Father and Son by means
of the identity of nature, not as something shared between them but rather as coming
forth from the Father through the Son to the created universe. Christ breathed
on the holy apostles and said Receive the Holy Spirit, and it is through
him and in him that we have received the impress of the divine and intelligible
image. For the divine apostle himself said in the letter to the Galatians My
children, with whom I am again suffering labour pains until such time as Christ
is formed in you. Now if we are conformed to Christ, and if we are enriched
by the divine image within us, then Christ himself is the image of God the Father,
and his exact resemblance, and we are called to his likeness, not by means of a
participation in holiness but rather in nature and essence.
For it is not
unreasonable that the one who, by nature, is related to the true God by nature
and who is generated from his substance should himself be God. He has been sealed
by God the Father, as John the wise says, He who receives his witness has put
his seal to the fact that God is true. But he has not been sealed in the same
way as we have been, for the Father writes to the effect that he himself is wholly
in the nature of the Son, and substantially intimates such. Thus Christ says, He
who has seen me has seen the Father.
Cyril of Alexandria (d.444) succeeded his uncle
Theophilus as patriarch in 412. Until 428 the pen of this brilliant theologian
was employed in exegesis and polemics against the Arians; after that date it was
devoted almost entirely to refuting the Nestorian heresy. The teaching of
Nestorius was condemned in 431 by the Council of Ephesus at which Cyril presided,
and Mary's title, Mother of God, was solemnly recognized. The incarnation is central
to Cyril's theology. Only if Christ is consubstantial with the Father and with
us can he save us, for the meeting ground between God and ourselves is the flesh
of Christ Through our kinship with Christ, the Word made flesh, we become children
of God, and share in the filial relation of the Son with the Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment