His homily at Ephesus was was the starting point for a flourishing of rich literature in honour of the Virgin Mary.
Newsdesk (18/98/2025, Gaudium Press) Saint Cyril of Alexandria is one of those great figures of antiquity who embodies the purity of a Church still in its youth, working with the strength of a well rounded human nature, the strength of the ancients.
Cyril was born in 370 and governed the Church of Egypt from 412 until his death in 444.
A defender of orthodoxy against Arianism and other heresies, he was always a defender of the Papacy, occupied at that time by the great Saint Celestine. Under the pontificate of Leo XIII, he was granted the title of Doctor of the Church, such is the wisdom of his voice and his writings.
He stood out as a great orator and polemicist. But he was also an excellent pastor. In addition to his treatises on doctrine, he wrote 156 homilies on Saint Luke with a pastoral and practical tone, as well as his pastoral letters, which are found in 29 Easter homilies.
Participant of the Council of Ephesus
Significantly, he presided as Papal Legate over the Council of Ephesus, the Third Ecumenical Council of the Church, where he fought and defeated the heresiarch Nestorius, who denied the Divine Motherhood of the Virgin, that is, that Our Lady would be only the mother of the human nature of Christ, so she could be called Mother of Christ, but not Mother of God.
This abominable doctrine of Nestorius was the occasion for St. Cyril’s clear theology of the Incarnation: “Emmanuel certainly has two natures: the divine and the human. But the Lord Jesus is one, the only true natural son of God, at the same time God and man; not a deified man, like those who by grace become participants in the divine nature, but true God who for our salvation appeared in human form,” and therefore, the Mother of Christ is Mother of the whole being of Christ, who is one and is God, and therefore it can be said that the Mother of Christ is also Mother of God.
The fourth of the seven homilies he delivered during the Council of Ephesus, the famous Sermo in laudem Deiparæ, is particularly memorable. It was the starting point for a flourishing of rich literature in honour of the Virgin Mary.
Saint Cyril celebrates the divine greatness of Mary’s mission.
He has the great honour of being the author of the Greek expression “Theotokos”, which means Mother of God, or literally “She who gave birth to God”: that is the Virgin Mary … and, in the order of grace, our Mother too!
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Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
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