On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and Truth, Book 12

Book 12 opens: why Levi’s chosen priests were still examined§1

1ON ADORATION AND WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH — BOOK TWELVE. On the priesthood.

Cyril: We have now spoken plainly about the sacred vestment, and also about the sacrifices which God ordained must be carried out at the consecration of the priests. But since countless things were declared in the oracles concerning them, about their ministry and purifications, and about the exact propriety they need if they are to live in strictest keeping with the law, polished to a spiritual refinement, I think I must say one thing before all the rest.

Palladius: What is that?

Cyril: The tribe sprung from the blood of Levi was an offering dedicated to God and chosen out of all the tribes, and the law gave this family the duty of serving as priests, God granting it this honor as its special portion. Yet he did not leave the priestly company altogether unexamined, nor did he simply open the office to anyone at all on the ground that he was of Levi’s blood. He ordered that they be inquired into, and very minutely, so that no one who happened to suffer one of the censured defects should be unacceptable to God and make his approach blemished, and, all but rushing into the tent of witness with unwashed feet (Exodus 30:19–21), give offence, even without meaning to. And again it is written thus in Leviticus (Leviticus 21:16–19): ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Say to Aaron: A man of your family throughout your generations who has a blemish in him shall not come near to offer the gifts of his God. No man who has a blemish in him shall come near: a man who is blind, or lame, or has a stunted nose, or a clipped ear, or a man who has

Bodily defects are not sin but figures of the soul’s faults§2

2Cyril: …a broken hand or a broken foot, or is hunchbacked, or has a white spot on his eye, or has lost his eyelashes, or a man who has a malignant scab, or a scaly rash, or has only one testicle. No one of the seed of Aaron the priest who has a blemish in him shall draw near to offer the sacrifices to the Lord, because there is a blemish in him. He shall not come near to offer the gifts of his God. He shall eat the gifts of his God, the most holy things, and of the holy things; but he shall not come near to the veil, and he shall not draw near to the altar, because he has a blemish; and he shall not profane the sanctuary of his God, for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.’ (Leviticus 21:19–23)

Palladius: Tell me, then: is bodily infirmity held as a charge against anyone? Does the Creator indict nature even when it has been impaired against its will?

Cyril: Well said, Palladius; you think rightly. Blame and indictment may sometimes fall on those whose minds turn aside to evil of their own free choice, and who have come to prize a leaning toward outrage of any kind. But to censure infirmities of the flesh, which come about by nature and against the will, is, I think, harsh and unfeeling, and not free from the charge of crassness. From this, then, we can understand that the Creator of all would not have indicted human nature for causes beyond the will, nor would he have sent away from the ministry appointed to him, as unholy, a man who is sick in body. Rather, once more, by a type drawn from bodily things he refines our minds toward his subtler purposes: he hints at the many forms of the passions in the soul and gives us to understand that such a thing is hateful to God. Did not the inspired Paul also say that those chosen for the priesthood must be attended by an honorable verdict on every quality that wins admiration? ‘So that the man of God may be complete,’ he says, ‘fully equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3:17). He insisted, too, and very clearly, that the bishop must be above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2), and he was very exacting in these matters.

Palladius: I agree. Next, believe me, I would very much like to learn the meaning of each of the infirmities we have just listed.

Cyril: Come, then, let us take them one at a time, each in its kind, and say what comes to mind. ‘A man,’ it says, ‘throughout your generations, of your family, who has a blemish in him, shall not come near to offer the gifts of his God’ (Leviticus 21:17). The word is firm, the decree severe. For the law was laid down not only for those born of Aaron at that time; it reaches to the whole family and to every priestly line, and it extends through all time. That, I think, is what ‘of your family throughout your generations’ makes clear. For what is not blameless is always unacceptable to God. And no one could name a time when what has been condemned would become dear to him, above all in the case of spiritual infirmities;

The blameless priesthood in Christ; what the blind and the lame signify§3

3Cyril: …rather, what he holds in honor is the blameless: what suffers no corruption from any quarter, what is sound, so to speak, in virtue and strong in sanctification, what has trained itself thoroughly to win approval through patient endurance, and is always quick to understand. That is why he makes his law on this point extend to the whole family, showing the sacred and chosen race to be his own and free of all alloy: then, in the tribe of Levi and the blood of Aaron; but now in those who have been sanctified in Christ, the great and true High Priest (Hebrews 4:14), to whom we have been joined through the Spirit, and so have been shown to be sharers and partakers of his own nature (2 Peter 1:4). So too, having called into brotherhood those who have been justified by faith (Hebrews 2:11), he rejoices over them as sharers with him, saying: ‘Here am I, and the children whom God has given me’ (Hebrews 2:13; Isaiah 8:18). Or did not the inspired Paul see fit to attach this saying, too, to the person of Christ?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: He bars from serving as priest, then, anyone with any of the defects named, as infirm and open to ridicule. For it says, ‘A man who is blind or lame shall not come near to offer the gifts of God’ (Leviticus 21:17–18). Now even taken in a bodily sense, the matter plainly has much that is unseemly. For when the eyes have wasted away, and the foot is not firm and cannot walk straight, is it not better for the priest to keep still, since he cannot even tell where he ought to go, rather than to go about amid laughter, using another’s foot and another’s eyes? But we need not say much about that. Let us rather speak of what we need for knowledge and spiritual contemplation, getting beneath the coarse surface of the history. By ‘blind,’ then, he seems to mean the man who is very foolish and utterly senseless. For what the eye is to the earthly body, the mind may be called in the soul. It is lit up by the divine light, it opens its eyes to that pure beauty itself, and with the fine and nimble movements, as it were, of its thoughts it springs up readily toward exact belief, and knows how to keep from missing right doctrine. This, I think, is what is said in the Proverbs: ‘Let your eyes look straight, and let your eyelids nod toward what is just’ (Proverbs 4:25). And somewhere it is also said to the mother of the Jews, who did not see rightly: ‘See, your eyes are not good, nor is your heart; they are set on nothing but your greed, on innocent blood, to shed it, on your wrongdoings, and on murder, to commit them’ (Jeremiah 22:17). So the one who is blind in the spiritual sense is unfit for sacred service, that is, the man wholly without understanding, maimed in mind and judgment. Unfit as well is the lame man, that is, one who does not know how to walk uprightly and has no strength to walk soundly. For blindness, as I said just now, is a sign of utter lack of understanding; lameness, in turn, is a sign of a movement and eagerness that is, as it were, broken and feeble, such as a man may show toward each of the things he has to do. Unless it is right to call out to those so maimed:

Weak hands, the flattened nose and the clipped ear§4

4Cyril: ‘Be strong, you slack hands and paralysed knees’ (Isaiah 35:3). And Christ himself accused the Jewish people of refusing to make their paths toward him straight, letting them turn aside instead into lameness (Hebrews 12:13), and of slipping away from right reasoning. ‘For foreign sons,’ he says, ‘lied to me; foreign sons grew old and limped away from their paths’ (Psalm 18:44–45). So lameness of mind and blindness are on a par and very close to each other, being afflictions alike in kind: blindness reduces to uselessness what is precious in understanding, and lameness what is strong in good works. Besides these, the law said that the man with a stunted nose must be rejected, and with him the man with a clipped ear. One might apply to them an explanation like this. By the sense of smell we test what smells foul and what is most fragrant, among things, I mean, whose nature has received the power to give off a smell; and that sense is very discerning, both of what can give delight and of what perhaps is not of that sort but otherwise, ranking, as it were, among the worse. The human mind, I would say, if it is sound in what belongs to it, sets out vigorously to discern the quality of things and will make an exact test of each; and like an excellent money-changer, testing everything, holding fast to what is good and keeping away from every form of evil, as it is written (1 Thessalonians 5:21–22), it will win high approval. For it rejects as counterfeit whatever among our deeds is in any way shameful and falsely stamped, and it would readily accept what is profitable and better. The flattened nose, then, signifies what is not altogether healthy and sound in perception, the faculty by which we discern each thing excellently, give the better verdict to the best and the worse to the more shameful, and are, and are called, wise and quick-witted and everything else of that kind. For the smell, rising as it were to the mind, is the real quality, so to speak, of the things the mind perceives. And to have the ear clipped would suggest, as it seems to me, being hard of hearing. For when the hearing is clipped, I would grant that the affliction is an obedience given only in part, not wholly answering to the rein, or else the inability to listen blamelessly to sacred things, and above all to the sacred writings. Some indeed do just that, most thoughtlessly turning the soul’s readiness to hear toward things it should not. These would be, in the words of the most wise Paul, those who have itching ears and turn their hearing away from the truth (2 Timothy 4:3–4), who devote themselves to spirits of error (1 Timothy 4:1), and who have turned aside to profane, empty talk (1 Timothy 6:20). So the man with a clipped ear would suggest the maiming of the inward and spiritual hearing, and its corruption from rightness into something worse. And if anyone is seen to have a broken foot or a broken hand (Leviticus 21:19), let him withdraw, it says, and be ranked with the others; and here the law leads us to understand, by the man whose foot or hand may have been broken but who is not wholly disabled,

Halting deeds, the bent back, and sin done openly§5

5Cyril: …the one who cannot carry his deeds through to the full, and whose walk, that is, his activity, is not entirely beyond reproach: I mean in conduct and in a life lived fully by the law. These again would be those who do the work of the Lord carelessly, against whom the voice of the prophet has pronounced woe (Jeremiah 48:10), or those who pursue what is just, but not justly, as it is written (Deuteronomy 16:20). Notice that even a moderate injury to the leg is put on the same level as spiritual and complete lameness, and is counted as the same thing. For not doing good rightly will be placed on the same footing as being unable to do any good at all. One may fairly see in lameness the ‘not at all,’ and in the crushed limb the ‘not soundly.’

Palladius: So it seems.

Cyril: Again, he lists the hunchback, the man with blotches, and the man with bleary eyes among the most unfit (Leviticus 21:20). We say the hunchback is the one who is, as it were, bent over: he looks downward in mind, leans toward the passions of the flesh, and fixes his eye on earthly things (clearly, the eye of the mind), and has at last come to such a frame of mind that he hates to be set upright, I mean, for the duty of setting the mind on things above (Colossians 3:2). Under this would fall the charges against the Jews, of whom it is written: ‘Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and bend their back for ever’ (Psalm 69:23; Romans 11:10). The man with blotches is one who has what is called a blotch on his very forehead. This is a kind of sickness that darkens the surface of the skin. It takes from those who suffer it even the chance of staying hidden, since it breaks out on the very brows and spreads over the whole face. Such a man, then, is blotched in body; but in a spiritual sense he points to the man who is unseemly openly and without concealment, who has, as it were, no clean face, but whose ugliness of life is plain to all, so that perhaps he does not even know what one of the wise rightly said: ‘The wise will hide their own shames.’

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: Are there not, Palladius, countless passions in us?

Palladius: Yes. What of it?

Cyril: This, my good friend: each of us is sick with his own sickness, but often, overcome by shame before his brothers, he takes great pains and care both to seem healthy and to keep his faults out of sight.

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: But suppose someone has come to such shamelessness that he thinks nothing of choosing to sin openly and of throwing away entirely the honors that belong to a decent life. Would not anyone think that such a man has gone far from the sacred and holy race?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: The law, then, calls such a man blotched, since he neither knows how to hide nor will bear to hide the sickness and passion that has come upon him. And the man with bleary

Bleary eyes, the raging itch, and the spreading rash§6

6Cyril: …eyes is the one who is by no means deprived of sight, yet cannot see soundly. Such would be those who have understanding, but in whom no choice to think rightly is seen. For some, he means, see what is good, yet turn the bent of their own wills aside toward what they ought not; others, though they could have a share in right doctrine, all but ruin their own minds themselves: they throw themselves into a most unlovely hunt after notions and accept nothing sound in their belief about God. Such above all are the children of the heretics, and the Jews besides, who believe that the Father is God, yet most foolishly thrust away the One who has come forth from him, the Son by nature. So the word proclaimed by the voice of the prophet is true of them: ‘They have eyes, and they do not see’ (Jeremiah 5:21). For seeing is of no use unless care is taken that one sees soundly, just as we rightly said that lameness and the crushed foot are placed on the same footing. For it will make no difference at all whether one cannot walk at all or perhaps does not walk soundly, meaning, of course, the path of conduct and the road of deeds.

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: ‘No man shall come near to serve as priest who has a raging itch or a spreading rash on him, or who has only one testicle, or anyone who has any blemish in him’ (Leviticus 21:20–21). We should liken the raging itch to the most monstrous of the passions, which pour down on the mind in sharper, more acrid streams and pass all measure, and which begin in pleasure but end in bitterness. Or would you not say that in each kind of sin the evil is seen in a measured form and also beyond measure?

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: The man overcome by bodily pleasure: could he not suffer this both moderately and beyond measure? Some are only overcome, and are sick in a restrained way; others reach the height of the evil and are sick with a pleasure that rages out of control, so that they slip even beyond the passions that belong to nature.

Palladius: I understand what you mean.

Cyril: So in each of the evils, whatever has strayed monstrously beyond reason, and beyond the measures that are usual and common among most people, may be called the raging itch. The spreading rash, besides, is any passion at all that keeps creeping outward over a wider area and never stops growing worse. But the divine law wants us to check the passions that befall us and to reduce them. You will understand something of this kind when you hear: ‘If the spirit of the ruler rises against you, do not leave your place, for healing will put an end to great sins’ (Ecclesiastes 10:4). For passions left unrebuked always creep toward a more shameful state; they seize heart and mind and lead to utter ruin. So we must rebuke what is base, while the sobriety within us, by turning back again toward what is better, keeps it

The half-man and the holy food: what the blemished may receive§7

7Cyril: …in check and destroys it little by little. Next, as I at least think, he means by the man with only one testicle the half-man, the one who has, as it were, been cut off from full manliness. ‘For neither the sexually immoral,’ he says, ‘nor the soft will inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). By this he names the effeminate, because, though they were given the nature of a man, they belie their manhood: they grow soft in mind and body and willingly break themselves down into feebleness and womanish ways. It is likely, again, that the man with one testicle points to something else as well. For it is usual to call a ‘man’ one who is strong and well knit, and fully able to accomplish whatever he may choose. So a half-man may fittingly be understood as one who is not wholly strong, nor fully vigorous for what befits him. For it is not fitting that one devoted to God should bring him a courage cut short and a strength maimed, so as to be weak in part; rather he should ‘act like a man and be strong,’ as it is written (1 Corinthians 16:13), with an eagerness that no one can fault or mock. So the man listed under ‘blemish’ is admittedly unfit for sacred service. Yet he is not barred from sharing in the holy food. ‘For he shall eat of the holy things,’ he says, ‘but he shall not go in to the veil, and he shall not come near the altar’ (Leviticus 21:22–23). For those who are still subject to weaknesses hidden within the mind may share in the blessing of Christ, not as ranked among the saints, for growth in holiness, for steadiness of mind, and for a steadfastness firmly grounded in all that is best, but in the way that suits the sick: for the putting away of evil, the ending of sin, the putting to death of pleasures, and the recovery of spiritual health. For since Christ is a new creation, according to the Scriptures (2 Corinthians 5:17), we too therefore receive him into ourselves through his holy flesh and blood, so that, refashioned through him and in him for newness of life (Romans 6:4), we may put off the old man, who is being corrupted according to the desires of deceit, as it is written (Ephesians 4:22).

Palladius: You are right.

Cyril: So he forbids the practice of sacred duties to those who are sick with a spiritual affliction that is, as it were, ingrained and cannot be thrown off; for what is always sick with passions grown into it is not holy at all. But if one of those who are blameless in themselves and beyond reproach in their ministry happens to suffer these common passions, which do not fade away, he commands that he must not be left unrebuked, saying (Leviticus 22:2–3): ‘Speak to Aaron and to his sons, and let them keep away from the holy things of the sons of Israel, and they shall not profane my holy name in what they themselves consecrate to me: I am the Lord. Say to them: Throughout your generations, any man from all your offspring who comes near

Uncleanness that keeps a priest from the holy things§8

8Cyril: …to the holy things that the sons of Israel consecrate to the Lord while his uncleanness is on him, that soul shall be cut off from me: I am the Lord your God. And any man of the offspring of Aaron the priest who is a leper or has a discharge shall not eat of the holy things until he is cleansed; and whoever touches any uncleanness of a person, or a man from whom an emission of seed goes out, or whoever touches any unclean creeping thing that defiles him, or a human being by whom he is defiled through any uncleanness of his: the soul that touches them shall be unclean until evening. He shall not eat of the holy things unless he bathes his body in water; and when the sun sets he shall be clean, and then he shall eat of the holy things, for it is his bread. He shall not eat what has died of itself or been torn by beasts, so that he is not defiled by them: I am the Lord. And they shall keep my charges, so that they do not incur sin because of them and die because of them, if they profane them. I am the Lord who sanctifies them’ (Leviticus 22:3–9). For those who bring the sacred offerings, he says, that is, the things consecrated by the sons of Israel, whatever they dedicate to God as sacrifice, must not profane his name by bringing them without first being purified, while the uncleanness they may have contracted is still unwashed; otherwise, he says, let them know that they will at once pay the utmost penalty. For ‘I am the Lord’: that is, not a falsely named god, against whom, even if someone happened to sin, there would be no offence. For what wrong could we do to wood or stone that would make us answerable? So, adding correction to these severe threats as a safeguard against uncleanness, he usefully lists the ways in which we might incur it, so that the ministers might know the way of the uprightness that best befits them, and how they may be acceptable and clean as they walk through the life most pleasing to the Lawgiver.

Palladius: You are right.

Cyril: So he removes the leper and the man with a discharge from the sacred ministry, and says that he must have no share in the holy things until he has thrown off what befell him and is wholly free of the sickness. To these he adds, as sick with an uncleanness of the same kind, the man who touches any uncleanness of a person, or from whom an emission of seed goes out, and also the one who touches a creeping thing, or touches a man who has any discharge that defiles. The law does not, I think, rebuke bodily conditions, in its true and faultless aim; rather, still in types that belong to the senses and the body, it shows what happens in souls. Leprosy, then, is a symbol of deadness; for it eats away and devours the flesh, changes it into what is against nature, and alters the appearance of the body. A discharge of seed is a casting away of the power to bear fruit, as nature flows away into nothing. Such, one might see, is a man’s mind too, when it has been led astray into corruption and is all but wasted away into barrenness, through being unable to understand any of the things

Touching the unclean: sharing in another’s sin§9

9Cyril: …necessary for salvation. Such were Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Timothy 1:20), who both thought and said that the resurrection had already taken place (2 Timothy 2:17–18). To these may be added those who turn without restraint toward every kind of outrage, and simply throw away the fruit of their own minds on stale and wanton pleasures. So the leper and the man with a discharge, that is, the one held fast by the works of deadness (and the works of deadness would be the passions of the flesh), and the one who does not keep his inner fruitfulness uncorrupted, the hidden fruitfulness of the mind, must withdraw, he says, from the holy things until he is cleansed (Leviticus 22:4). For as the inspired Paul said, ‘Whoever eats the body of the Lord and drinks his cup unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself, not discerning his body’ (1 Corinthians 11:27, 29). ‘But let a man,’ he says, ‘examine himself, and then let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup’ (1 Corinthians 11:28).

Palladius: Excellently said.

Cyril: Notice, then, Palladius, how precise the law is. It does not stop at the leper and the man with a discharge alone, but condemns along with them, as it were, anyone who happens to touch those who are sick, I mean the leper and the man with a discharge. ‘And whoever touches,’ he says, ‘anything unclean from a person, or one from whom an emission of semen goes out, shall be unclean’ (Leviticus 22:4).

Palladius: And what harm could come from this to those who touch them?

Cyril: None at all, if we take the words at face value, for a touch of the body will not defile a person’s soul. But the law is spiritual (Romans 7:14), and once again it teaches us in figures that those who are guilty of the passions of the soul are unclean, charged with defilement; and those who touch them, or cling to them, are defiled together with them, clearly by the bond of a shared will or shared deeds. For ‘bad company ruins good character’ (1 Corinthians 15:33), and ‘a believer has no share with an unbeliever’ (2 Corinthians 6:15), and light is hostile to darkness and can make no terms with it (2 Corinthians 6:14). It is true, too, that ‘with the holy you will be made holy, and with the innocent man you will be innocent, and with the chosen you will be chosen, and with the crooked you will turn crooked’ (Psalm 18:25–26). He showed at once that to be sick with the most outrageous of the passions will be grievous not for the sick alone, but that those who come to share their mind and judgment will be defiled with stains no less than theirs, for he added: ‘Whoever touches any unclean creeping thing, it will defile him, or a man through whom he will be defiled by any of his uncleanness; the soul that touches them shall be unclean until evening’ (Leviticus 22:5–6). We say that the bitter and venomous creeping things, in name and in fact, are those whom this saying would fit: ‘The poison of asps is under their lips; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness’ (Romans 3:13–14). And these would be, before all others, those who twist what is right and drum into simpler people a teaching that leads to ruin, carrying them off to thoughts that are not good and to a twisted opinion about God…

Unclean until evening: cleansing comes through Christ§10

10Cyril: …or perhaps they are also those who say, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’ (1 Corinthians 15:32), and those who drag the minds of the less instructed toward the pleasures of the world. Unclean, too, and apt to defile those who touch them or come near them (by the law, I mean, of shared disposition) are those of whom the most wise Paul also said somewhere: ‘If anyone who is called a brother is a fornicator, or a drunkard, or a robber, or greedy, or an idolater, do not even eat with such a one’ (1 Corinthians 5:11). Or would you not say that for the holy and chosen race, those who have not fallen into such evils, the most fitting thing is not to mix with those who are sick with them either?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: ‘So whoever touches these,’ he says, ‘shall be in uncleanness until evening. He shall not eat of the holy things unless he washes his body with water; and when the sun has set he shall be clean, and then he shall eat of the holy things, because it is his bread’ (Leviticus 22:6–7). Besides this he also forbids eating what has died of itself or been torn by beasts, since it is quite able to defile (Leviticus 22:8). See, then, Palladius, that the putting away of all filth and the release from the charges against us could come about in us in no other way than through Christ alone, and at the time of his coming.

Palladius: What do you mean?

Cyril: He showed that everything before the coming of the Only-begotten was unpurified and still stained, and had no share in life, when he said, ‘He shall be unclean until evening, and he shall not eat of the holy things’ (Leviticus 22:6). Or did not Emmanuel come in the last times of the age?

Palladius: Yes, that is plain.

Cyril: And we have been given life by eating the bread that is truly holy and from heaven (John 6:32–33), that is, Christ, when the time had come to its end, as though the sun were setting and bringing the measure of time to a close in evening.

Palladius: Quite so.

Cyril: This is why the one who is defiled remains unclean until evening and has no share in the holy and life-giving food, while he waits for the time of cleansing. But once he has washed in water and the sun has set, he is clean, and he has the bread from heaven as his own. For to those who have been sanctified through water, I mean in holy baptism, it has been granted, as it were, to be blessed through Christ; and he himself is the living bread, and he again is the one who came down from heaven and gives life to the world (John 6:51; John 6:33). That the setting of the sun would mark the time of our Savior’s coming you will see clearly from what God says about the lamb to Moses, the revealer of sacred things: ‘Speak to the sons of Israel, and let them take for themselves a sheep by households’ (Exodus 12:3); ‘and it shall be kept,’ he says, ‘from the tenth day of the month until the fourteenth, and the whole…

Dead flesh, torn flesh, and who may eat the holy bread§11

11Cyril: …assembly of the sons of Israel shall slaughter it toward evening’ (Exodus 12:6). For the hour at which Emmanuel appeared to us is said to be the tenth, close now to evening itself, that is, to the end of the present age. What has died of itself and what has been torn by beasts bring defilement, in the spiritual sense, on those who touch them no less than leprosy does. For what has died of itself plainly signifies what is wholly dead and gone cold, as in the works that belong to the flesh, and what is torn by beasts signifies the soul that has fallen under the devil. And it is a saving thing to keep away from a man who has set his mind on dead things and gone cold in his thinking, and who, as it were, makes himself food for Satan, for Satan devours whatever souls he chooses (1 Peter 5:8). How could this fail to be clear to those who are truly sound of mind and have earnestly striven to keep as far as possible from everything that usually defiles?

Palladius: That is so.

Cyril: Since our account has now come to this point of precision, and the aim of the law is that the right to share in the holy and life-giving foods should belong not at all to the defiled, but to those who are blameless, he at once draws a careful line between the classes. He has defined who would be worthy of the blessing and able to press on toward it, and he makes clear who ought to be driven away from the sacred food, saying: ‘And no foreigner shall eat holy things; a sojourner with a priest or a hired servant shall not eat holy things. But if a priest acquires a person bought with silver, he shall eat of his bread, and those born in his house, they too shall eat of his bread’ (Leviticus 22:10–11). He shuts out the foreigner, the man of another race, as defiled and still unwashed, that is, the one who has not yet believed and does not know the true God. For how could those who cannot be bound through a spiritual and inward kinship to Christ, the great and true Priest, share in his bread? For we will not give what is holy to the dogs, and no one would throw the spiritual pearls before swine, according to the Savior’s own words (Matthew 7:6). So the foreigner has no share at all. With him he joins the sojourner and the hired servant. These again, in my own view, would be those who live for the world and conduct their lives by it, and have made the earth their homeland, as it were, by minding only the things of the flesh; but in their love for Christ they are only sojourners, living, as it were, in bare faith alone. As far as words go, they are good and reasonable, but in the deeds and ways of true piety they have strayed very far indeed. The hired servants, in turn, would perhaps be those who chose even the bare act of believing not out of reverence for the truth, but hunting for the favor of certain people as a kind of wage for seeming to be Christians; who fawn to win the attentions of those able to benefit them; who make godliness a means of gain (1 Timothy 6:5) and a cover for love of profit, and put on fair words like a mask. As far, then, as the force of the law goes…

The priest’s household and the priest’s daughter§12

12Cyril: …if the sojourners and the hired servants are ranked with the foreigners, they will also be with them, as far as possible from the holy things; and since they are all but sick with kindred faults, they will justly suffer a penalty of the same kind. But he said that the sharing of the holy things must be left open to the members of the household. For those born in the priests’ households will eat, he says, and anyone they may happen to buy. By ‘acquired’, ‘bought with silver’ and ‘born in the house’ he means, I take it, the one who is genuine in faith, a member of the household in spirit, and bought with a price, as the blessed Paul says (1 Corinthians 6:20). For, as it is written, ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (Galatians 3:13).

Palladius: True.

Cyril: He further commands that if the daughter of a priest is married to a foreign man, she shall not eat of the firstfruits of the holy things (Leviticus 22:12). He has plainly honored the member of the household by allowing him to share in the holy things as one who is genuine. Yet those who have this close bond with the priest must firmly refuse to cling to people who are not their own by faith or by way of life and have not gained through virtue a kind of kinship with them; this will be clear enough to anyone willing to search the evidence of the sacred Scriptures. For just as in the passages already read he made the leper unclean, and with him the man with a discharge, and made the one who came near them, joined to them, as it were, by touch, a sharer in their defilement and uncleanness, so here too he says that the priest’s daughter, even if she happens to have a holy kinship, will gain nothing from it when she is joined to another, that is, to a foreigner, one who is in no way akin to her and not of the blood of Israel. Let this, then, be the historical sense. But when we carry the law over into spiritual contemplation, we say that by the priest’s daughter he means the soul that has been born again of water and the Spirit (John 3:5) by the power of Christ, and called through faith to sanctification. Yet even such a soul, he says, may have no share in the holy things if she is married to a foreign man, that is, if she joins herself to people who are not truly holy and have no spiritual bond with God. For bodies the manner of union would be bodily, but for spirits it is spiritual.

Palladius: And who, would we say, have been carried away into this?

Cyril: Those whom the solemn word of Wisdom sought to keep safe when it said: ‘My son, do not let ungodly men lead you astray, and do not consent if they urge you, saying: Come with us, share in blood’ (Proverbs 1:10–11). We will also add those who in their ignorance have turned away from the right faith and run after the flesh; who do not admit the words given through the Holy Spirit, but have given heed to spirits of error, through the hypocrisy of liars who are seared in their minds (1 Timothy 4:1–2). These have thrust aside their close bond with Christ, and in truth they have been married to foreign men; they have accepted the devil’s seed, and in error they bear as fruit the…

The priest’s widowed daughter: the soul that returns, and the Synagogue that strayed§13

13Cyril: …works of error and of destruction. So a soul is to be cast off, even if it was once sacred and holy, when it has been caught in such shameful defilements. For whatever becomes loathsome and defiled through attaching itself to base and unholy men is altogether unholy. Right after this he laid down another law, close to the first; it runs as follows: ‘And if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow, cast out, and has no offspring, she shall return to her father’s house as in her youth; she shall eat of her father’s bread’ (Leviticus 22:13). The historical sense, I think, is plain; but we must go on to the inner and hidden meanings. For if, he says, a soul should be cast off as condemned, and is seen from then on to be without a husband, that is, without the spiritual Bridegroom, and bears no fruit of virtue, let her hurry her steps back to what she was at the beginning, and let her return quickly to her own father’s house, seeking, that is, through repentance, to belong to God; and then she will eat of his bread. Nothing prevents us from applying the force of these words also to those we spoke of a moment ago. For if, he says, a sacred and holy soul, carried away by profane men, should slip into error and take in the defilement of alien doctrines, and so become like a widow, sent away from God, but should then somehow come to her senses and learn what she has slipped into, let her return to the Father. For he receives those who have strayed, if they prove clean of the unholy seeds sown in them, and if they carry no trace of the foulness of those who led them astray; and so he gathers them into one flock with the holy worshipers, setting himself before them as bread from heaven, their life-giving food (John 6:32–33). And I think the lawgiver also hints at something else to us through these laws. For he foretells, as it were, the falling away of the Synagogue of the Jews, the punishment that follows it, and the kindness that will be shown to her in due time, which by the mercy of God brings her back and restores her to what she was at the beginning. For ‘a priest’s daughter,’ he says, ‘if she is married to a man of another race, shall not eat of the firstfruits of the holy things’ (Leviticus 22:12). For as far as teaching and instruction go, the inspired Moses became a kind of father to the Synagogue of the Jews. She was, then, a priest’s daughter; for Moses too was a minister of sacred rites, since he was of the blood and tribe of Levi. But this man’s daughter became the wife of a man of another race. For she held what God had laid down to be worth almost nothing, and, in a manner of speaking, disregarded the seeds from above; she has studied teachings that are the commandments of men (Matthew 15:9; Isaiah 29:13), and she bears fruit for the opinions of others. That is why God reproached her, saying to her through the voice of Jeremiah: ‘Lift up your eyes and look straight ahead, and see: where have you not defiled yourself? By the roadsides you sat waiting for them like a lonely crow, and you defiled the land with your prostitution and your wickedness; and you had many shepherds, to your own stumbling’ (Jeremiah 3:2–3). These, however, are the ancient charges against the Synagogue of the Jews; and akin to them are also…

The Synagogue will return to the Father; holy things eaten in ignorance§14

14Cyril: …new charges, those that concern Christ himself. For she utterly refuses the Bridegroom who comes from above, from God the Father, and gives heed to the words of the scribes and Pharisees. So she has become the wife of a man of another race, and for that reason she has remained without a share in the holy things; for she did not eat the bread from heaven, that is, Christ (John 6:32). You see the charges, and the punishment that Christ at once brought on those guilty of such impiety. Now observe also how they have been shown mercy and been brought back to what they were at the beginning. ‘A priest’s daughter,’ he says, ‘if she becomes a widow, cast out, and there is no offspring in her, shall return to her father’s house as in her youth, and shall eat of her father’s bread’ (Leviticus 22:13). For the Synagogue of the Jews was shown to be a widow and cast out because of her impiety toward Christ; she has remained in sins, possessing none of the spiritual goods, and has continued so for a long time. But she will return to her father’s house; for she too will be called to God through faith; with us she will claim as Father the Creator of all things, and so would come to share in the blessing of Christ. The prophet’s words will make this mystery clear to you as well; for he spoke thus: ‘For the sons of Israel will remain many days without king or ruler, without sacrifice or altar, without priesthood or oracles; and afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and their king, and they will be filled with awe at the Lord and at his good things in the last days’ (Hosea 3:4–5).

Palladius: What you say is true.

Cyril: So the sacred things, that is, the holy things, are fit to be eaten and shared by those who, as far as it rests with themselves, are without blemish. But they will no longer be set before those who are not sound, or who have been defiled by their ties with others. For it is written: ‘With the crooked you will deal crookedly’ (Psalm 18:26). He made it plain at once that even for those who are truly consecrated it is not without penalty to treat the holy things as if they were for common use, and to think they differ in no way from other things; for he says: ‘And a man who eats the holy things in ignorance shall add a fifth more to it and give the holy thing to the priest; and he shall not profane the holy things of the sons of Israel which they set apart for the Lord, and they will bring on themselves the iniquity of trespass when they eat their holy things; for I am the Lord who sanctifies them’ (Leviticus 22:14–16).

Palladius: I do not quite understand what you mean.

Cyril: You will learn it very clearly; there is nothing hard about it. The offerings dedicated for a pleasing aroma, a calf, say, or a sheep, were carried up to the altar in part, once the entrails, the feet and head, the fat, and sometimes the kidneys too had been taken out; and with what remained they fed the priests. For ‘those who eat the sacrifices are partners in the altar’ (1 Corinthians 10:18), as the…

Eli’s sons, the added fifth, and priests kept from the dead§15

15Cyril: …inspired Paul said. So it was necessary that the portion of what was brought be consecrated to God, according to the law that fitted each offering, and that the ministers be sustained with the rest of the body of the sacrifice. But if anyone kept back the whole gift entirely for himself and spent it on his own needs, having burned none of it, he was charged under the law as one who had eaten holy things. This is just what the sons of Eli the priest did: they seized and profaned the sacred offerings before the sacrifices were made, and said most impiously to those who came to sacrifice, ‘Give meat for the priest to roast’ (1 Samuel 2:15). But those deeds, being deliberate and plainly insolent, were punished accordingly. ‘But if,’ he says, ‘someone, either overtaken by forgetfulness or not knowing exactly what the laws require, should do any such thing, let him bear a penalty: let him repay the same amount without fail, and let him add to it a fifth as well,’ that is, the fifth part of the value; ‘for in this way he will be cleared of the charges and will ward off the harm that comes from ignorance’ (Leviticus 22:14; Leviticus 5:15–16). If, then, what is done in ignorance is not free from indictment, what would anyone think of what is done out of madness and audacity? Those, then, who have the care of the sacred things must refrain from seeking to claim anything for themselves before the sacrifice; otherwise let them know that, having committed grave offenses, they will incur punishment and come under the wrath of God. Or do you say that this is not true, my friend?

Palladius: It is entirely true.

Cyril: He made it clear that those who serve as priests must be holy and washed clean, and must shake off with all their strength any frame of mind that is in some way dead and cold, and not alive to virtue; for he says: ‘Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: They shall not be defiled for the dead among their people, except for the nearest of their household: for father and mother, for sons and daughters, for a brother, and for a virgin sister who is close to him and has not been given to a husband; for these he may be defiled. He shall not be defiled suddenly among his people, so as to profane himself. And you shall not shave a bald patch on your heads for the dead, and they shall not shave the beard from their faces, nor cut gashes in their flesh. They shall be holy to their God, and they shall not profane the name of their God; for they offer the sacrifices of the Lord, the gifts of their God, and they shall be holy’ (Leviticus 21:1–6). For if one looks closely into the truth of the matter, another man’s death would bring no defilement at all on anyone. Bodily deadness, however, may be a type of the deadness that is inward and in souls, by which anyone who comes near it must be defiled, whether by consenting to it or by doing the same deeds. For it would befit the saints to keep away from dead works and to stay as far from them as they can, and it is good not to keep company with those who are sick with such things. For it is written: ‘Whoever touches pitch…

Mourning kept within measure, and the laws on a priest’s marriage§16

16Cyril: …will be defiled’ (Sirach 13:1). For whoever does not refuse to cling to another would very easily share in his wickedness. Yet the law allows the consecrated to incur defilement without blame for father and mother, for children and brothers, and indeed for close kin, by going even to their lifeless bodies, out of reverence for nature; and in this it overlooks wrongs that are wrongs only as types, so that those who are known to God might not seem hard, haughty and unfeeling; and indeed the law says plainly: ‘Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you’ (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16). In another way too, and for another reason, we say the consecrated are barred from mourning. For they are priests of life, and offer the sacred gifts to God for the undoing of death (for the death of Christ, foreshadowed through sheep and calves, is the undoing of death); how then would it be fitting for them to be weighed down with grief over death? So too the inspired Paul writes plainly to those baptized into Christ in the hope of life and resurrection: ‘I say this so that you may not grieve as the rest do who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus, and will raise them with us’ (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14). The law, then, allowed the consecrated to go to those of their very closest kin who had died. But it sets a measure on the matter, and does not let them undo what most befits them by going to excess, beyond what is needed, so that the revered dignity of the priesthood may not be wronged. For it keeps them from baring their heads as others do, and from shaving off the beard to the disgrace of the face; and it commands them not even to entertain the thought of the impious acts of pagan frenzy, I mean the gashes cut into the flesh (Leviticus 21:5). For there is nothing unreasonable in sharing the grief of one’s own family; but to lose all decorum would be unseemly and quite senseless. ‘For let all things,’ he says, ‘be done decently and in order’ (1 Corinthians 14:40). And the Savior himself has commanded us as well that the things of God must be honored above even duties to parents, as the old law required of the priests; for he says: ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matthew 10:37).

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: He commands, then, that the priests be defiled over the dead as little as possible. And showing us in other ways too that the holy cannot be joined or blended with the profane, he laid down for us the laws on marriage, adding at once: ‘As for every priest: they shall not take a wife who is a prostitute or profaned, and they shall not take a woman put away by her husband; for he is holy to the Lord his God, and you shall sanctify him; he offers the gifts of the Lord your God; he shall be holy, for I the Lord who sanctify them am holy’ (Leviticus 21:7–8). Now the woman who has truly lived as a prostitute and been defiled is sick, clothed with the charge of shameful deeds, and has an undisputed…

The unfaithful Synagogue, and the law for the high priest§17

17Cyril: …condemnation. Yet the woman cast out by her husband is by no means free of blame either, for she would not be driven from her husband’s home without some cause. Those who have been brought into so holy a ministry, then, must keep away not only from evils whose guilt is plain and open to view, but also, I think, from anything that might bring with it a name for wickedness, a poor opinion of them, or the indecency of lying under a great many suspicions. The passage also seems to hint at the misfortune of the Synagogue of the Jews. Because she played the harlot with many shepherds, as it is written (Jeremiah 3:1), Christ did not receive her into spiritual fellowship: Christ the wholly pure priest, who offers himself to the Father for us as a choice gift, who is holy with us in his humanity, although he himself sanctifies the whole creation, since he is God from God. He made the mystery plainer still when he said: ‘And if the daughter of a priest profanes herself by playing the harlot, she profanes the name of her father; she shall be burned with fire.’ (Leviticus 21:9) For the Synagogue of the Jews has been given over to the flame as unholy and profane, because she followed the opinions of the scribes and Pharisees and devoted her whole mind to the commandments of men (Matthew 15:9). So it was very just that she heard the prophet say: ‘How have you become a harlot, faithful city of Zion, full of justice?’ (Isaiah 1:21) Having played the harlot, then, and utterly disregarded the spiritual Bridegroom from above, she has become fuel for the fire. So the prophet Jeremiah too sheds bitter tears over her and says: ‘A beautiful olive tree, well shaded in appearance: so the Lord called your name. At the sound of its circumcision a fire was kindled against it; great is the affliction upon you. Its branches have become useless, and the Lord of hosts, who planted you, has pronounced evil against you.’ (Jeremiah 11:16–17) To turn away from what is right, then, and to seek to attach oneself to shameful and unholy teachers, is a form of spiritual harlotry.

Palladius: That is my view too.

Cyril: In what has been said, the types are rather faint and not very clear in the case of the other priests, but in Aaron, who bears the image of Christ, they shine out, as it were. For he said again: ‘And the priest who is great among his brothers, on whose head the anointing oil has been poured, and who has been consecrated to put on the garments, shall not take the turban from his head’—that is, shall not take off the mitre—‘and shall not tear his garments. He shall not go in to any dead person; he shall not be defiled for his father or for his mother. He shall not go out of the holy place, and shall not profane what is consecrated to his God, because the holy anointing oil of God is upon him. I am the Lord.’ (Leviticus 21:10–12) ‘He shall take as his wife a virgin of his own kindred. A widow, a woman cast out, a woman profaned, or a harlot, these he shall not take; but he shall take as his wife only a virgin from his own people. And he shall not profane his offspring among his people.’ (Leviticus 21:13–15)

A priesthood and kingship never laid aside; the Life does not mourn the dead§18

18Cyril: …‘I am the Lord God, who sanctifies them.’ (Leviticus 21:15) You see plainly how Emmanuel, the Christ, is named here, still in types, in the person of Aaron. For he who is himself the priest perfect in every way was anointed with the Spirit, according to the Scriptures (Acts 10:38). So the glory of his priesthood is one he can never lose. For ‘he shall not take the turban,’ it says, ‘from his head’ (Leviticus 21:10); that is, he will not lay aside the dress that befits a priest. For it was said to the Savior and Redeemer of all: ‘You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.’ (Psalm 110:4; Hebrews 7:17) ‘The former priests were many in number, because death prevented them from continuing; but he, because he remains for ever, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is also able to save completely those who draw near to God through him.’ (Hebrews 7:23–25) This is what the inspired Paul wrote. So the fact that the turban is never taken from his head would hint that his priesthood can never be lost. And if the reading were ‘He shall not take the mitre from his head,’ you will readily understand that his kingship is perpetual and cannot be shaken; for the mitre, with the golden band across the front of the brow, would be a symbol of rule and kingship. ‘Nor shall he tear his garments,’ it says (Leviticus 21:10). Some people are in the habit of doing this over the dead, but such a thing is wholly foreign to Christ. For the Life would be the last to suffer grief at a death. The Life has nothing at all to do with what is dead; rather, it is itself the undoing of death and the overthrow of corruption. So the Savior once rebuked those who wanted to wail over the little daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, saying: ‘Go away, and do not weep, for the girl is not dead but asleep.’ (Matthew 9:24; Luke 8:52) For it was truly out of place for them to shed tears as over a dead girl when the Life of all, that is, Christ, was present. And if he wept over Lazarus (John 11:35), we say that this was the fruit of his tender love, and the compassion that divine gentleness has toward us. For our nature, under the tyranny of death, was being pitied, and his tear was its release from that suffering.

Palladius: So it seems.

Cyril: That there is nothing profane in Christ in any way is hinted at indirectly when the law says that the high priest must keep away from what is dead, going near no dead person at all, even though this means setting aside the honor owed to father, mother and brothers. See how wise the law is, and how seriously it takes the good order that befits what it signifies. In the case of the other priests it made allowance for nature, and for the dead who were very close and of their own blood it allowed the consecrated to carry out the customary rites without blame (Leviticus 21:1–3). It was not greatly concerned there about a fault against the shadow. For in that case the charges were written with us in view, and the type pointed to human beings; and if some defilement should attach to them, there is nothing strange in that. ‘For we all stumble in many ways’ (James 3:2), and in us our nature has fallen sick with wrongdoing. But in the case of the great high priest, that is, Christ,…

Christ free of all profanation; the virgin bride; no steps to the altar§19

19Cyril: …reverence has been kept pure even in the type itself, and the shadows have been kept free of anything counterfeit, so that the beauty of the truth should not be misrepresented, as though it had suffered harm in them. For Christ is free of all profanation; he knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21) and is beyond all defilement, or rather, he is all radiance and spiritual purity. He remains within all holiness, even if, here at least, its brightness has grown faint, because he stands firm on the laws of his own nature and is always the same and unchanging. This, I think, is what is meant by ‘He shall not go out of the holy place, and shall not profane what is consecrated to his God.’ (Leviticus 21:12) He says very rightly that he must take a virgin as his wife into the fellowship of marriage (Leviticus 21:13–14), and he declares the woman who has been driven out unfit for him. She may also stand as a type of the Synagogue of the Jews, for she has been cast out of union with him, and he says of her through the prophet’s voice: ‘She is not my wife, and I am not her husband.’ (Hosea 2:2) But Paul betrothed the Church from the Gentiles to Christ as a pure virgin (2 Corinthians 11:2), without spot or wrinkle, or rather holy and blameless (Ephesians 5:27). Taken in this way, of the Church from the Gentiles and of the mother of the Jews, the riddle would be true and the type not without beauty. But if someone wishes to apply the force of these ideas fittingly to each individual, we say that Christ has no union with profane and unholy souls; but with souls that are wholly chaste and pure, like virgins, he is joined spiritually, makes them fruitful, and calls them his own kin. For ‘whoever does the will of my Father in heaven,’ he says, ‘is my brother and my sister and my mother.’ (Matthew 12:50)

Palladius: You have put it rightly.

Cyril: He has plainly set out in his oracles what sort of men those chosen for sacred service must be, what they should rightly be eager to do, and what they ought to be free of. But it was surely wise, besides this, to state openly how they must perform the sacred rites, and to regulate by laws the kinds of sacrifices and everything that is offered, so that the whole matter might be blameless for them and they might in this way make their ministry most pleasing. So first of all he says: ‘You shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that you may not uncover your nakedness on it.’ (Exodus 20:26) But someone will say at once: how could this happen, when he gave the priests undergarments made of linen ‘to cover the nakedness’ of their flesh (Exodus 28:42)? Even if they had to climb up high, then, it would have done them no harm, since their nakedness was covered. What, then, shall we say the law is aiming at? The worshippers of idols thought it glorious and even necessary to set up altars high in their temple precincts, and they gave little thought to the need to be decently covered.

Humility at the altar, and the fire that never goes out§20

20Cyril: So the law wisely takes what usually happened among them as a starting point to raise the divine ministers to something better, and leads them, as it were from a bodily type, to spiritual contemplation. For ‘you shall not go up by steps to my altar,’ it says, ‘so that you may not uncover your nakedness on it.’ (Exodus 20:26) That is: Let the divine minister who has been consecrated for my service seek what is lowly and not leap up to the heights. Let him renounce boastfulness, so that he may not be seen as shameful and unlovely. For arrogance is utterly unlovely and shameful, and a most grievous sickness of the mind. ‘The greater you are,’ it says, ‘the more you must humble yourself, and you will find favor before the Lord.’ (Sirach 3:18) And the Savior’s disciple also writes: ‘Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.’ (James 1:9–10) For the rich man will pass away like the grass and will differ in no way from the flowers of the field (James 1:10–11).

Palladius: I agree.

Cyril: So he said that the minister must be free of pride and disdain. And how he may perform his sacred service in the most lawful and irreproachable way you will learn with full clarity, for it is written in Leviticus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Command Aaron and his sons, saying: This is the law of the whole burnt offering. The whole burnt offering shall stay burning on the altar all night until morning, and the fire of the altar shall burn on it; it shall not be put out. The priest shall put on a linen tunic, and he shall put linen undergarments on his body; and he shall take away from the altar the burnt portion of the whole burnt offering, which the fire has consumed, and set it beside the altar. Then he shall take off his robe and put on another robe, and carry the burnt portion outside the camp to a clean place. And the fire on the altar shall burn on it and shall not be put out; the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, lay the whole burnt offering in order on it, and place on it the fat of the peace offering. And fire shall burn on the altar continually; it shall not be put out.’ (Leviticus 6:8–13) The fire of the altar, then, is continual and wholly unceasing; and it is not foreign or brought from outside, but its own, that is, the fire that is from above and from heaven. And what does this mean? Our holy altar is filled with the glory of God, and the divine and ineffable nature is pictured in the form of fire. But the passage also seems to hint, and very aptly, at something mystical.

Palladius: What do you mean by that?

Cyril: Were we not saying that Emmanuel himself is, as in a type, the divine altar, through whom we draw near to God the Father, offering spiritual worship and all but sacrificing the fragrance of the virtues and the holiness of the gospel way of life? For ‘present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ (Romans 12:1)

The altar fire that never goes out: the Spirit remaining on Christ§21

21Palladius: We did say so; I will keep it in mind.

Cyril: Consider, then, that the law does not allow the fire that came down from heaven upon the altar to die down, or, as it were, to fade and go away, but has it stay on the altar always and make its home there without ceasing (Leviticus 6:12–13). And John the Baptist bore witness about Christ: ‘I have seen the Spirit descending from heaven in the form of a dove, and it remained on him. And I did not know him,’ he says, ‘but he who sent me to baptize said to me: He on whom you see the Spirit descending from heaven and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit’ (John 1:32–33). So the Holy Spirit was being prefigured, still as in shadows, coming down upon Christ in the form of fire and always remaining on him. For the fire of the altar never sleeps and never ceases at all. That the Spirit is likened to the nature of fire, the blessed Baptist also assures you when he says to the crowds of the Jews: ‘I baptize in water, but among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie’ (John 1:26–27). And he said: ‘He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Matthew 3:11). For we have been baptized not into fire that the senses perceive, but in the Holy Spirit, who like fire melts away the defilement in souls. That is why it is also written of Christ: ‘Behold, he comes in like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; and he will sit refining and cleansing, as silver and as gold’ (Malachi 3:2–3). The fire of the altar, then, cannot be quenched. For the Holy Spirit has remained in Christ, even though the Spirit is in him by nature, inasmuch as he is God and is understood to be God. The law also called the fire the altar’s own (Leviticus 6:9). For even though the Only-begotten became man, and in the manner fitting for humanity is also said to have come to share in the Spirit, the Spirit is nonetheless both his and in him, and truly his own. But if someone chooses to apply this passage to each of those sanctified through faith in Christ, so that each is in some way already understood to be a divine altar, the reading is a profitable one. For it is fitting that holy men, who have dedicated their own life to Christ, be seen warm and fervent in the Spirit (Romans 12:11), and always so: not sinking into coldness through worldly pleasures, but rather rekindling the mind in holiness toward love of God and desire for virtue. For this is the manner of rational worship (Romans 12:1). This, then, is the meaning of the altar. But he adds a further command that is useful at the literal level as well. He says the ash must be carried out not by someone else, an outsider, that is, someone of another tribe, but rather by the service of those who have been sanctified (Leviticus 6:10–11). Observe how the law allows nothing that belongs to divine service to be thought trivial, or unworthy, as it were, of the priest’s own hands, so that he might hand it over to someone else who is not holy; for the holy things are not open to the unclean. The divine altar itself, too, is not to be touched.

Sacred vestments kept from common use; the law of the grain offering§22

22Cyril: And so that those chosen for sacred service may know the surpassing holiness of the divine altar, he attaches reverence even to the sacred vestments themselves. For with wise provision he does not allow them to appear outside the tent in their sacred dress. For he means: let not the holy things, after contact with the unclean and carrying defilement from what is foreign, wrong the reverence due to the holy tent. For this reason he directs them to gather the ash dressed in sacred vesture, but to change their clothes when they carry it outside and leave the holy places (Leviticus 6:10–11). A command akin to this was also given through the voice of Ezekiel, who writes thus: ‘And he said to me: The chambers on the north and the chambers on the south, which face the open spaces, these are the chambers of the sanctuary, in which the priests, the sons of Zadok, who draw near to the Lord, to the most holy things, shall eat; and there they shall lay the most holy things and the grain offerings, and the offerings for sin and the offerings for ignorance, for the place is holy. No one shall enter except the priests; they shall not go out from the court of the sanctuary into the outer court, so that those who bring the offerings may be holy always, and may not touch their vestments in which they minister, for these are holy; and they shall put on other garments when they touch the people’ (Ezekiel 42:13–14). So the very vestments of the priests are holy, and kept apart from the common people. And the whole burnt offering burns night and day (Leviticus 6:9–13), for the fragrance of Christ never ceases. And the life of the saints too, if it is understood after the manner of a whole burnt offering, has a fragrance without end; for they give off the fragrance of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:15), offering to God, as priests, what the gospel way of life gives them to boast of, as it were, in works.

Palladius: What you say is true.

Cyril: How the matter of the whole burnt offering stands is not unclear from what we have said. And how the rite of the grain offering, too, may be carried out quite correctly he lays down in these words: ‘This is the law of the grain offering, which the sons of Aaron shall bring before the Lord, in front of the altar. And he shall take from it a handful of the fine flour of the offering, with its oil and with all its frankincense that is on the offering; and he shall bring it up on the altar as an offering by fire, a fragrant odor, its memorial to the Lord. And what is left of it Aaron and his sons shall eat. It shall be eaten unleavened in a holy place; in the court of the tent of witness they shall eat it. It shall not be baked with leaven. I have given it to them as their portion from the Lord’s offerings by fire. It is most holy, like the sin offering and like the guilt offering. Every male among the priests shall eat it. It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations, from the Lord’s offerings by fire. Whoever touches them shall be made holy’ (Leviticus 6:14–18). So the whole burnt offerings signify the complete, so to speak, and entire dedication of those who are especially holy, while the grain offering signifies the life that is holy in part and lived under God.

The grain offering as a life holy in part§23

23Cyril: An exact figure of this life is the fine flour offered up in the priest’s handful with the oil and the frankincense. For the life consecrated to God, even if perhaps only in part, must surely be fragrant, and enriched with the richest hopes. Or would you not say that every good work of ours is most fragrant?

Palladius: Certainly.

Cyril: What then? Is it not done by us in good hope?

Palladius: Yes, for what comes from God will surely follow.

Cyril: So the frankincense, and the fine flour moistened with oil, point us to a life that is fragrant and very rich.

Palladius: Well said. But what kind of life among us would be holy in part?

Cyril: One that has not reached the goal of a saintly way of life, and does not walk the path set very high, as perhaps John did, he who was the voice, or the holy apostles; and yet one that does not lose its claim to reverence merely because it perhaps falls short of the lofty path set before us. Or is not the life of those in the world who have children, if they choose to live uprightly, in some way divided between God and the world, in the words of blessed Paul (1 Corinthians 7:33–34)?

Palladius: It is divided; how could it not be?

Cyril: So the partial consecration of the fine flour, which has fragrance and cheerfulness, was a type of the life that is not wholly given over to God, but stands in the middle, as it were, and looks both ways. The law says that this will also be for a memorial (Leviticus 6:15) of the one who brought it through the ministry of the priest. And truly we shall gain this: to be held in God’s remembrance through the things by which we bear fruit and give off fragrance. For Christ acts as mediator and brings to God both the one who is wholly holy, as one ranked among the whole burnt offerings, and the one who is not entirely so, because he is divided and given in part to the world, as a kind of partial offering. The grain offering is unleavened. For it is fitting that whatever we do be done with purity, for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Indeed, the Savior commanded us to shun standing in the middle of the marketplaces to make our prayers (Matthew 6:5), a gloomy face when fasting (Matthew 6:16), and sounding a trumpet unbecomingly when we show mercy to our brothers (Matthew 6:2). For this is leaven, which profanes holy things. What is done for the glory of God should be free of any charge of seeking to please men; for in this way the offering would be truly unleavened and holy. The remainder of the grain offering is a portion and food for the priests. Every male eats it in a holy place (Leviticus 6:16–18). That the holy things are consumed by the priests in a holy place preserves the reverence due to our more mystical teachings; that every male eats it aptly suggests that softness is an ugly thing, and truly unholy, in those whom God has chosen. For softness makes a man unholy, cuts him off from spiritual blessing, and leaves him without share in the good things God has allotted to the saints.

Judas’s softness, and the priest’s grain offering wholly burnt§24

24Cyril: Judas too grew soft, and turned aside to greed for shameful gain; and this came from an unmanly and ignoble way of thinking. That is why he has remained without any taste of the good things that come from God, and wholly without share in the gifts given to the saints.

Palladius: So it is.

Cyril: This, then, is the law for the offering from the common flock. But he commanded that the offering from the priestly race be brought in another way, saying: ‘This is the gift of Aaron and his sons, which they shall offer to the Lord on the day when you anoint him: a tenth of an ephah of fine flour as a perpetual grain offering, half of it in the morning and half of it in the evening. It shall be made with oil in a pan; he shall bring it kneaded, in rolls, a grain offering of broken pieces, a grain offering for a fragrant odor to the Lord. The anointed priest who succeeds him from among his sons shall make it. It is a perpetual law; all of it shall be offered. And every grain offering of a priest shall be wholly burnt; it shall not be eaten’ (Leviticus 6:20–23). See, Palladius, how exact the law is, and how finely it provides for the safety proper to holy things. Since he commanded that the offerings of the common flock should not be wholly burnt, because these people do not have a life that is entirely holy, but one divided, as it were, between God and the world, he rightly makes a distinction: he places those chosen for sacred service in the higher rank, and says that the offering made for them must be wholly burnt, as they burn to God as incense the fine flour that is brought, morning and evening, that is, through the whole day and at every season. For the chosen man is always, in some sense, holy, and has a fragrance that never ceases, a spiritual one, clearly. He is not divided between God and the world, as some are, but is in constant attendance and without distraction (1 Corinthians 7:35), wholly and entirely devoted to his own Master, and crying out, as it were: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20). The tenth of the fine flour, then, would be a sign of a life that gives off fragrance to God at every season. But ‘in a pan,’ he says, and ‘kneaded with oil,’ and ‘he shall bring it in broken pieces’ (Leviticus 6:21). In a veiled way these signify to us: the pan, I think, what is painful; the kneading with oil, abundance joined with cheerfulness; the broken pieces, the tender and, so to speak, easily broken heart of the saints. For the life that is entirely and wholly holy will surely have to be lived amid toils, will have abundant hope in God, and will have a heart very easily broken; for hardness would least befit it. For it is written: ‘A broken and humbled heart God will not despise’ (Psalm 51:17). But the devil’s heart is set fast like a stone, and like an anvil that cannot be beaten (Job 41:24), for so Holy Scripture says. The law also extends through all time, fulfilled in the succession of those who serve as priests; for one must follow…

The priest’s whole offering, and Christ as the sin offering§25

25Cyril: …the good record of those who went before them, and show themselves imitators of the fathers' glory, following in the footsteps of their worship and bringing to God the fragrance dearest to him, not in part but wholly. For this, I think, is what is meant by ‘Every sacrifice of a priest shall be wholly burnt’ (Leviticus 6:23).

Palladius: Then we shall offer ourselves and be dedicated to God as a fragrant aroma, following in the footsteps of the saints’ life and keeping to their sacred rites, the spiritual ones, plainly.

Cyril: Certainly, Palladius. But to wipe away defilement and escape from sin could not come about or be found in anyone in any other way than through Christ alone, in whom and through whom is all cleansing, who endured the saving slaughter for us. One may learn this without going far, from the decree that stands next to it and is joined to it. It runs thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying: This is the law of the sin offering. In the place where they slaughter the whole burnt offering, they shall slaughter the sin offerings before the Lord; they are most holy. The priest who offers it shall eat it; it shall be eaten in a holy place, in the court of the tent of witness. Everyone who touches its flesh shall be made holy; and if any of its blood is sprinkled on a garment, whatever it is sprinkled on shall be washed in a holy place. And an earthen vessel in which it is boiled shall be broken; but if it is boiled in a bronze vessel, he shall scour it and rinse it with water. Every male among the priests shall eat them; they are most holy to the Lord’ (Leviticus 6:24–29).

The victim for sin, then, could be none other than Emmanuel, who is the true Lamb who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). And he is slaughtered in the place of the whole burnt offering. For Christ is not holy in part, as we are, for he committed no sin (1 Peter 2:22); he is wholly fragrant and sacred, and the giver of holiness to all others. For even if he was reckoned among the lawless (Isaiah 53:12) and, in the divine plan, was counted among the condemned, the Father knows the death of the Son to be holy and sacred. That is why he says: ‘In the place where they slaughter the whole burnt offering, they shall slaughter the sin offering also; it is most holy’ (Leviticus 6:25). For just as the Son is God of gods, so also is he Holy of holies, himself making the whole creation holy by his own Spirit, since he is by nature from the Father and is truly God.

The priest who brings the sacrifice, he says, shall eat it. For each one, I think, who has been brought into the sacred ministry will gather the fruit of his own labors and reap the reward of his own service. And what remains of the sacrifice is eaten in holy places and in the court of the holy tent (Leviticus 6:26). For the mysteries are offered in churches, and in them the chosen race is counted worthy of the holy table of Christ. And wherever a lawful priest serves, the place will be holy. And the sacrifice makes holy the one who touches it, and so does the sprinkling of the blood (Leviticus 6:27). For we draw near…

The guilt offering and the parts reserved for God§26

26Cyril: …to the holy things for no other reason than to share in the holy Christ through the ineffable and spiritual sacrifice. And the vessels that serve the sacrifices are also purified (Leviticus 6:28), so that what has served sacred things may belong to nothing else and not be put to human uses. This law has been kept, and it is preserved in the churches. And the law will again make clear that being blessed befits those who act with manly courage, when it says: ‘Every male among the priests shall eat them’ (Leviticus 6:29).

Palladius: The point is clear.

Cyril: Besides this, he also lays down how the sacrifice should be properly carried out (the sacrifice for sin, I mean): which parts of it the ministers may eat, and which are set apart for a fragrant aroma. For it is written thus: ‘And all the sin offerings, any of whose blood is brought into the tent of witness to make atonement in the holy place, shall not be eaten; it shall be burned up in fire (Leviticus 6:30). And this is the law of the ram of the guilt offering; it is most holy. In the place where they slaughter the whole burnt offering, they shall slaughter the ram of the guilt offering before the Lord. And he shall pour its blood at the base of the altar all around. And he shall offer from it all its fat: the loin, and all the fat that covers the entrails, and all the fat on the entrails, and the two kidneys and the fat on them that is on the thighs, and the lobe on the liver with the kidneys; he shall remove them, and the priest shall offer them on the altar as an offering to the Lord; it is a guilt offering. Every male of the priests shall eat them; they shall eat them in a holy place; they are most holy. As the sin offering is, so is the guilt offering; there is one law for them. The priest who makes atonement with it shall have it’ (Leviticus 7:1–7).

For he declares that the inward parts of the victims must not be made into food. They must, he says, be dedicated to God alone and offered to him. This, I think, is what ‘it shall be burned up in fire’ points to; that is, what is dedicated is to be plainly assigned to the divine nature alone, which is above all things, and of which fire is a type. And when the ram of the guilt offering is sacrificed, its blood is poured out at the base of the altar; for the death of Christ is holy and sacred, and fragrant as well. For the inward parts are offered up: the fat, the kidneys, and the lobe of the liver. These, I think, as I have said elsewhere too, would be a type of virtue, not of one virtue only but of many kinds. For the ways of virtue are very many. And so we have been justified in Christ, who endured death for us and dedicated himself to God the Father as a fragrant aroma (Ephesians 5:2).

He makes clear that we shall not serve God without reward, for he says straight after this: ‘And the priest who offers someone’s whole burnt offering, the skin of the whole burnt offering that he offers shall be his; and every sacrifice that is prepared in the oven, and every one that is prepared…’ (Leviticus 7:8–9)

Equal shares for the priests and the sacrifice of praise§27

27Cyril: …on a grill or in a pan shall belong to the priest who offers it. And every sacrifice mixed with oil, and every one not mixed, shall belong to all the sons of Aaron, to each an equal share’ (Leviticus 7:9–10). This law too is preserved in the churches, and it secures equality for those who serve at the altar, giving each, without variation, his portion of the bloodless sacrifice. Knowing this, Paul writes: ‘So also the Lord commanded that those who attend the altar should live from the altar’ (1 Corinthians 9:13–14). And those who offer the sacrifices are sharers in the altar, as he himself says again somewhere (1 Corinthians 10:18).

Palladius: That is so.

Cyril: He also regulates the sacrifice of praise and directs how it is to be done, saying: ‘This is the law of the sacrifice of salvation that they shall offer to the Lord. If he offers it for praise, then with the sacrifice of praise he shall offer loaves of fine flour mixed with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil, and fine flour kneaded with oil. With loaves of leavened bread he shall offer his gifts, along with the sacrifice of salvation offered in praise. And he shall bring one out of all his gifts as a portion set apart for the Lord; it shall belong to the priest who pours out the blood of the sacrifice of salvation. And the meat of the sacrifice of salvation offered in praise shall be his, and it shall be eaten on the day it is offered; they shall not leave any of it until morning’ (Leviticus 7:11–15). He has commanded that the sacrifice of praise be made with leavened loaves, even though elsewhere he said clearly and plainly: ‘You shall offer no leaven and no honey to the Lord your God. You shall offer them to the Lord as a gift of firstfruits, but they shall not be put on the altar for a fragrant aroma to the Lord’ (Leviticus 2:11–12). Would you not say, then, Palladius, that looking closely into these things brings profit?

Palladius: Very much so.

Cyril: What, then, is the meaning of this arrangement? Come, let us say, searching it out as far as we can and opening up the hidden path. So, very much in keeping with the law, the inspired David too, striking up the spiritual lyre, says: ‘I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord’ (Psalm 116:13), and so expressly calls the sacrifice of praise a cup of salvation. And we too offer praise in great numbers in the churches, in unity of spirit, brought together through faith as into one body (Ephesians 4:3–4) and one soul. For it is written: ‘The multitude of those who believed were of one heart and soul’ (Acts 4:32). We also often give glory alone, quietly at home, by day and by night; and this is the habit of good people. Or is what I say not true?

Palladius: How could it not be?

Cyril: But whether the offering is brought by us in the churches in great numbers, or is performed in other places, perhaps by one alone, or by two somewhere, or three, or more still, no distinction is drawn among those present who are accustomed to sing hymns and have gathered for this. For together with those already cleansed through holy baptism there joins in offering the sacrifice…

Leavened and unleavened bread in the sacrifice of praise§28

28Cyril: …the catechumen too, who is still under instruction; and after he has offered the praise together with the perfect, he withdraws from the more sacred mysteries and is kept from the sacrifice that is in Christ. This is why the law did well to foretell this arrangement, when it commanded that the sacrifice of praise be made with leavened loaves and with unleavened wafers (Leviticus 7:12–13). Each of the things named, I think, points to a kind of life. The leavened bread will be a type of a life not yet cleansed through holy baptism, nor yet wholly freed from the world’s uncleanness. The unleavened wafer is a type of the life already washed clean in Christ through faith: the life of the perfect, I mean, whom the inspired Paul also addressed when he said: ‘Let us therefore keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth’ (1 Corinthians 5:8). And again: ‘So cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened’ (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Palladius: Very well said.

Cyril: Besides these, the fine flour, not yet brought together into one mass as it is in a loaf or a wafer, but still remaining, as it were, in its grains, hints that each of those who offer the praise does so as one by himself. For we are acceptable to God when we give him glory both each of us on our own and all of us together as one company. Oil is poured on the sacrifice of praise, signifying the gladness of the act, and that mercy from God will in every way and without fail follow those who are accustomed to offer it. For it says: ‘Offer to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High; and call upon me in the day of your affliction, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me’ (Psalm 50:14–15). And the disciple of Christ also writes: ‘Is anyone among you downcast? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise’ (James 5:13). So the law clearly showed in figure that the sacrifice of praise must be carried out with leavened loaves, with unleavened wafers, and with fine flour still in its grains. One portion of each was brought forward (Leviticus 7:14), and of the fine flour, as it were, a single handful; a sheep was slaughtered and its inner parts were burnt according to the law; and the rest was food for those appointed to serve as priests, the law thus showing that the priesthood does not go unrewarded. And it adds a further command: ‘On the day it is offered it shall be eaten; they shall not leave any of it until the morning’ (Leviticus 7:15). Through this, again, we may perhaps understand something like this: when the time has run its course, and the present age has passed like a day, another manner of giving glory, beyond those we know, will be devised for us. For just as those under the law, when they had been set free from Pharaoh’s tyranny, said with joy: ‘Let us sing to the Lord, for he has been greatly glorified; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea’ (Exodus 15:1); and just as some of the saints, foreseeing in the Spirit the achievements of our Savior’s coming, which are incomparably brighter and greater, cried aloud: ‘Sing to the Lord a new song’ (Psalm 98:1), and this was: ‘God has gone up with a shout’ (Psalm 47:5), when he had despoiled Hades, ‘and said

Fuller praise to come, and the priests’ share of the offerings§29

29Cyril: …to those in bonds, “Come out,” and to those in darkness, “Show yourselves”’ (Isaiah 49:9): in the same way, I think, once death has been abolished and sin wholly undone, there will be a manner of praise fitting that time. For we shall sing hymns for greater things; and, made rich with good things beyond mind and speech, we shall crown Christ, the giver of all good things to us, with brighter praises, together with God the Father. For it says: ‘Whether there are prophecies, they will be abolished; whether there is knowledge, it will cease. Now we know in part; but when what is perfect comes, what is in part will be abolished’ (1 Corinthians 13:8–10). And Christ himself also said: ‘These things I have spoken to you in figures; but the hour is coming when I shall no longer speak to you in figures, but shall tell you plainly about the Father’ (John 16:25). Since, then, a more perfect knowledge will be in us when its time comes, we shall also sing hymns more loftily than now.

Palladius: The argument is convincing.

Cyril: Having laid down for each sacrifice the rule that fits it, and having explained very well how it should be done, he at once makes the priest a sharer in the altar. For it is written thus: ‘And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: You and your sons and your father’s house shall take the firstfruits of the holy things; and you and your sons shall take the sins of your priesthood’ (Numbers 18:1). Then he adds that they must hold to their sacred tasks with a wakeful and sober mind (Numbers 18:2–7), and says: ‘And behold, I Myself have given you the keeping of the firstfruits from all that is consecrated to me by the sons of Israel; to you I have given them as a privilege, and to your sons after you, a perpetual ordinance. And this shall be yours from the consecrated holy things of the burnt offerings: from all their gifts, and from all their sacrifices, and from every trespass of theirs, and from all their sins, all that they render to me from all the holy things shall belong to you and to your sons. In the Holy of Holies you shall eat them; every male shall eat them, you and your sons. They shall be holy to you. And this shall be yours from the firstfruits of their gifts, from all the wave offerings of the sons of Israel. To you I have given them, and to your sons and your daughters with you, a perpetual ordinance; everyone who is clean in your house shall eat them. All the firstfruits of oil, and all the firstfruits of wine and of grain, the firstfruits of whatever they give to the Lord, I have given to you. All the first produce that is in their land, whatever they bring to the Lord, shall be yours; everyone who is clean in your house shall eat them. Everything devoted among the sons of Israel shall be yours; and everything that opens the womb, of all flesh, whatever they offer to the Lord, from man to beast, shall be yours. But the firstborn of men shall surely be redeemed with a ransom, and the firstborn of unclean beasts you shall redeem. Its redemption shall be from a month old; the valuation is five shekels, by the holy shekel; it is twenty obols (Numbers 18:8–16). But the firstborn

Sin offerings called ‘sin’, and food for the priest’s household§30

30Cyril: …of calves, the firstborn of sheep, and the firstborn of goats you shall not redeem; they are holy. You shall pour their blood against the altar, and offer up the fat as a burnt offering, for a fragrant aroma to the Lord. And their meat shall be yours, like the breast of the wave offering; and like the right shoulder it shall be yours. Every portion set apart from the holy things, whatever the sons of Israel set apart for the Lord, I have given to you and to your sons and your daughters with you, a perpetual ordinance; it is a covenant of everlasting salt before the Lord, for you and your offspring after you’ (Numbers 18:17–19). From this too, then, you see quite clearly, I think, that he has plainly assigned every kind of sacrifice and offering to the sacred and chosen race, including what comes ‘from every trespass and from all the sins’, that is, the victims offered for every trespass and sin. For the victims offered for sin bear the name ‘sin’. That is why our wise Paul also applied the law’s word to Christ, saying: ‘We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God; for him who knew no sin he made sin for us’ (2 Corinthians 5:20–21). For the Son was sacrificed for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3), as an innocent lamb (Jeremiah 11:19). That the law gave the name ‘sin’ to the victims offered for our sin, God will make clear when he says through the prophet concerning the priests: ‘They shall eat the sins of my people’ (Hosea 4:8); that is, what is offered for the sins of my people shall be food for the priests. So he assigns to them what remains of every sacrifice, and commands that it be eaten, but only in a holy place, he says, and by every male (Numbers 18:10; Leviticus 7:6). The reason for this we have given in what has gone before. But the firstfruits of oil, grain and wine, the payments for redeeming the firstborn, and the devoted things as well, are to be eaten no longer by the males alone, nor in the holy court, but now in the priest’s house; they are set there for the enjoyment even of his daughters, and of everyone close to him and of his own household. This distinction must be carefully observed. For the remains of the sacrifices would be fitting for the use of the consecrated alone, and will not be common food; and a holy place is the place that befits them. But whatever else is left over, having been brought as a gift, holds, one might say, a second rank of its own once the priest has received it; and it will belong to the priests’ whole household, if only the person is clean, that is, not profane: according to the law, if he is not uncircumcised, not a foreigner, not a leper, not one with a discharge (Leviticus 22:4, 10); but according to the aim of the new Scripture and the Church’s safeguard, if he is not unholy and unbelieving, if he is devout and loves God. For it would be most fitting for those brought into the divine priestly service to love to keep close company with people who are good in character and whose minds are full of love for God. And by adding to this, ‘It is a covenant of everlasting salt before the Lord, for you and your offspring with you’ (Numbers 18:19), he has commanded that what he also said elsewhere be kept without fail (Leviticus 2:13): ‘The salt of the covenant of the Lord shall not be lacking from your sacrifices. With every gift of yours you shall

Salt on the offering, sober priests, and the law that teaches Christ§31

31Cyril: ‘…you shall offer salt to the Lord your God’ (Leviticus 2:13). The sacrifice was sprinkled with salt, the type signifying that one must be consecrated to God with understanding, and make one’s approach to him, as it were, most savoury. For bread will not be eaten without salt, as it is written (Job 6:6). Christ said to the holy apostles: ‘You are the salt of the earth’ (Matthew 5:13).

Palladius: Well said.

Cyril: These, then, are the laws by which those who have been sanctified ought to serve as priests. But those who have been chosen, on whom the best verdict has fallen, must keep away both from profane company and from worldly care. Through such care even a steady mind may become drunk, and all but be toppled into improper pleasures. He makes this clear when he says in Leviticus: ‘You shall not drink wine or strong drink, you and your sons with you, whenever you go into the tent of witness or approach the altar, so that you do not die. It is a perpetual statute throughout your generations, to distinguish between the holy and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean. And you shall teach the sons of Israel all the statutes that the Lord spoke to them by the hand of Moses’ (Leviticus 10:9–11).

See, then, that they must keep awake. To handle the sacred liturgy with a darkened mind, and with an anxious heart that is drunk with worldly things, brings death; for some are drunk without wine. For at times the mind, unable to walk upright, slips away toward what is unseemly; the sacred things fall into disarray, and what is performed is no longer in good order but is thrown, as it were, off the straight road. Those who suffer this cannot help but offend God and endure bitter penalties for their carelessness. So one must keep awake and shake off the drunkenness that comes from worldly care. The Savior himself also urges this when he says: ‘Take care that your hearts are not weighed down by anxiety and the cares of this life’ (Luke 21:34).

What our way of sobriety would be, and how we shall remain unprofaned and clean and free of punishment, he indicated at once. For ‘distinguish,’ He says, ‘between holy and profane, and between clean and unclean; and you shall teach the sons of Israel all the statutes that the Lord spoke by the hand of Moses’ (Leviticus 10:10–11). This plainly means that the priests, having shaken off drunkenness, ought to keep away from men who are not holy but profane and unclean. And I think a man would do this very easily if he is himself unprofaned and clean; for ‘every living creature,’ it says, ‘loves its like, and a man will cling to one like himself’ (Sirach 13:15–16).

Besides this, they ought to be wise and able to teach; for whoever has charge of the rational flock must be sober and able to teach (1 Timothy 3:2). He puts it very well when he says, ‘You shall teach,’ that is, ‘You shall make plain,’ so that the hearers may be able to see that the law is a tutor (Galatians 3:24) and speaks the mystery of Christ. For nothing in it is hard to grasp or needs teaching, unless it is understood spiritually; for the historical account is entirely simple and free of the shadows of obscurity.