The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, Volume 2

Mystagogical Lectures

FIRST LECTURE ON THE MYSTERIES The First Part of the Baptismal Ceremony (The Rites of the Outer Chamber: Renunciation of Satan, Profession of Faith) With a Lesson from Peter's First Catholic Epistle, Beginning, "Be sober, be watchful," to the End1 By the same Cyril and Bishop John (I) It has long been my wish, true-born and long-desired children of the Church, to discourse to you upon these spiritual , heavenly mysteries. On the principle, however, that seeing is believing, I delayed until the present occasion, calculating that after what you saw on that night I should find you a readier audience now when I am to be your guide to the brighter and more fragrant2 meadows of this second Eden. In particular, you are now capable of understanding the diviner mysteries of divine, life-giving baptism. The time being now come to spread for you the board of more perfect instruction, let me explain the significance of what was done for youa on that evening of your Baptism. (2) First you entered the antechamber of the baptistery and faced towards the west. On the command to stretch out your hand, you renounced Satan as though he were there in person. 1 1 Peter 5.SfI'. 2 Note the comparatives. The imagery continues and develops that of the exordium of the Procatechesis, which is a point in favour of identity of authorship. For further paradisal imagery d. Procat. 16; Myst. 1.4 (end), 9; 2.2 (end). Christians, therefore, live in the East, the fiends (the "opposite Powers") in the West. 3 Here I follow a neat emendation suggested by Touttee, and my translation agrees with Piedagnel's-though not with his text! 153 154 ST. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM This moment, you should know, is prefigured in ancient history. When that tyrannous and cruel despot, Pharaoh, was oppressing the noble, free-spirited Hebrew nation, God sent Moses to deliver them from the hard slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians. The doorposts were anointed with the blood of a lamb that the destroyer might pass over the houses signed with the blood; so the Jews were miraculously liberated . After their liberation the enemy gave chase, and, on seeing the sea part miraculously before them, still continued in hot pursuit, only to be instantaneously overwhelmed and engulfed in the Red Sea. (3) Pass, pray, from the old to the new, from the figure to the reality. There Moses sent by God to Egypt; here Christ sent from the Father into the world. Moses' mission was to lead out from Egypt a persecuted people; Christ's, to rescue all the people of the world who were under the tyranny of sin. There the blood of a lamb was the charm against the destroyer; here, the blood of the unspotted Lamb, Jesus Christ, is appointed your inviolable sanctuary against demons. Pharaoh pursued that people of old right into the sea; this outrageous spirit, the impudent author of all evil, followed you, each one, up to the very verge of the saving streams. That other tyrant is engulfed and drowned in the Red Sea; this one is destroyed in the saving water.4 4 Baptism is the new Exodus; sometimes (e.g., in the Odes of Solomon) it is the crossing of Jordan and the entry into the Promised Land that is prominent. John 1.17 ("The Law ...") represents Christ as the new Moses, and from as early as the Epistle of Barnabas the Church is represented by Christian writers as the true Israel. For baptism and the Red Sea, cf. 1 Cor. 10.1, 2 on which cf. Origen, In Exod., Hom. 5.5 (GCS, Origen, 6.190), where the baptizand escapes (like the stag) by entering the water, in which the Egyptians then drown. Cf. In Lib. Iesu Nave, Hom. 26.2 (GCS, Orig., 7.459), where Israel's travels in the desert symbolize the baptismal renunciation, and the emergence from the Red Sea represents the baptismal grace; also Ephraem Syrus, Hymni in Fest. Epiph. 1.6 (Lamy, 1.7): "Israel passed over the sea and was unbelieving; the Gentiles, plunged in the baptismal waters, believed and received the Holy Spirit." D. Daube (The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism 106-140) says that a convert to Judaism in N.T. times, regenerated by proselyte baptism, was MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURE I 155 (4)' You are told, however, to address him as...