History Matters — To be deep in history….

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I AM Catholic

7 min readJun 8, 2024

Lectures on the Christian Sacraments the procatechesis and the five mystagogical catecheses ascribed to St Cyril of Jerusalem of Jerusalem, Cyril by Maxwell E. Johnson

If you are Catholic, you know your lines.

So, repeat after me….

4 After this the priest cries out, “Lift up your hearts.” For truly in that awe-filled hour it is necessary to have our hearts up toward the Lord, and not below with regard to the earth and earthly activities. For this reason the priest exhorts you with authority in that hour to leave behind all everyday cares and household worries and to have your hearts in heaven with the God who is the lover of humanity. Next, you answer, “We have [lifted] them to the Lord,” having made by this your agreement with him according to what you confessed. But let not such a one enter who with the mouth says, “We have [lifted] them up to the Lord,” but whose thoughts in his mind are focused on everyday cares. Always, then, keep God in mind! But if, on account of human weakness, you are not able to do this, try to do it especially in that hour.
5 Next, the priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord.” For rightly we are bound to give thanks, that he has called us, being unworthy, to such great grace, that, being enemies, he has reconciled us, and that he has made us worthy of the “Spirit of divine adoption” (cf. Rom 8.15). Next, you say, “It is right and just.” For by our giving thanks we do a right and just thing. But our Benefactor did not do only a just thing but more than just by making us worthy of such great love.

of Jerusalem, Cyril. Lectures on the Christian Sacraments: The Procatechesis and the Five Mystagogical Catecheses Ascribed to St Cyril of Jerusalem (Greek and English Edition) … Patristics) (Popular Patristics Series) (p. 78). St. Vladimirs Seminary Press. Kindle Edition.

For some of my readers, this is going to be very familiar.

Tomorrow, they will hear these lines and recite the corresponding response.

They will have no idea that they will recite the same lines found in an ancient manual on the meaning of the liturgy to explain an ancient liturgy. The manual’s dating is uncertain; some scholars date it back to 330 AD, others to 490 AD. Whatever the date, modern American Catholics will be using on Sunday the same call and response—and form of liturgy—used by their Greek-speaking ancestors almost two thousand years ago.

The manual is a series of lectures given to newly baptized Christians. The lectures represent “mystagogy” — teaching about the divine mysteries — in the rites of baptism and chrismation that the believers have just gone through. The mystagogy also explains the liturgy and the Eucharist.

There is a lot of value here for modern Catholics who probably don’t know their faith and almost certainly don’t appreciate how deep their faith goes back into history.

This is a short read encompassing four short chapters. The provenance of the text is not clear. Efforts are made to link the text to Cyril of Jerusalem or his successor, but this connection may not exist, particularly if the text dates to a century after their deaths. The text was used in other churches.

The introductory material gave me some insights I hadn’t possessed previously. For example, Jerusalem was one of the five leading patriarchates in early Christendom, including Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. However, Jerusalem was unoccupied for a long period after the disaster of the Bar Kochbar Rebellion and then became an exclusively pagan city. When Jerusalem emerged as a Christian center, it was within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan of Caesarea. In 325, Canon 7 of the Council of Nicea, promoted Jerusalem to a position of special honor. So, interestingly, two of the five historic patriarchs were established (or re-established) after the apostles.)

Those who want to think that transubstantiation was a late medieval invention will be inconvenienced by this text. These mystagogical lectures affirm transubstantiation without its Aristotelian nomenclature. Thus:

1 And this teaching of blessed Paul should prove to be sufficient to give you full assurance about the divine mysteries, of which you were made worthy when you became members of “the same body” (Eph 3.6) and blood of Christ. For he has just declared: “That in the night in which our Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed, taking bread and having given thanks, he broke [it] and gave [it] to his disciples, saying: ‘This is my body.’ And taking the cup, and having given thanks, said: ‘Take, drink, this is my blood’” (cf. 1 Cor 11.23–25). Therefore, since he himself said plainly about the bread, “This is my body,” who will dare to cast doubts from now on? And he, having also confirmed and said, “This is my blood,” who will ever doubt, saying, “It is not his blood?”

And:

3 So with every assurance, we receive as of the body and blood of Christ. For in the figure of bread is the body given to you, and in the figure of wine the blood is given to you, in order that, having received the body and blood of Christ, you may become [his] one body and one blood of Christ. For in this way we become “Christ-bearers,” his body and his blood having been given into our bodily members. Thus, according to blessed Peter, we become “sharers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1.4).

It is interesting that the author of the Lectures refers to the bread as the “figure” — or perhaps “form” — of the body. Likewise, the author cautions newly-received Christians not to be deceived by their eyes and taste:

6 Stop, therefore, considering the bread and wine to be ordinary; for they are body and blood according to the Lord who made the declaration. For even if your senses suggest this to you, let faith confirm you. Do not judge this by taste, but be informed without doubt from faith that you have been made worthy of the body and blood of Christ.

To put a knife into the symbolic perspective, the author writes:

9 Having learned and being informed, namely, that what appears to be bread is not bread — even if that is suggested by taste — but it is the body of Christ, and that that which appears to be wine is not wine — even if this is suggested by taste — but it is the blood of Christ.

As with the modern Catholic liturgy, the Lord’s Prayer was an integral part of the liturgy. The author of the Lectures explains the prayer. This reflection on the importance of “daily bread” — actually “supersubstantial bread” — is worth noting:

15 “Give us today our super-substantial bread.” The bread that is common is not super-substantial. But this holy bread is super-substantial, on account of which it is ordered to the substance of the soul. For this bread does not go into the stomach to be passed out into the latrine (Mk 7.19), but it goes into every part of your being for the advantage of both body and soul. And by “today” he means every day, as also Paul has said: “as long as it is called ‘today’” (Heb 3.13).

I have seen Protestant apologists and scholars who will offer up Ratramnus in the ninth century and Berengar of Tours in the eleventh century to suggest that transubstantiation was an “open question.” Of course, those two figures were quickly canceled, and their ideas were assigned to the dustbin of history until the Protestant Reformation. One can see why this occurred when one reflects that the Christian Church had been teaching the uniform position that “what appears to be read is not bread” as an official doctrine for centuries.

It is almost as if Newman’s canard that “to be deep into history is to cease to be Protestant” has some merit.

History Matters — To be deep in history….

Written by Peter Sean Bradley