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

Cyril: …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…