Christ the slain calf, and the place outside the gate

Cyril: …or through being forced, perhaps against our will, into what least pleases God, the Master of all. That is why the divine David also cried out for us: ‘Do not remember the sins of my youth and of my ignorance’ (Psalm 25:7). And since God is good by nature, kind and compassionate, and well aware of the weakness of our nature, the blessed Job all but openly accuses him of delaying and holding back from forgiving people their sins. For he speaks thus: ‘And why did You not grant forgetfulness of my lawlessness and cleansing of my sin?’ (Job 7:21) So the law proclaims aloud as well that in Christ, and in him alone, those held fast by sins will be justified through faith. For he is the one slaughtered for us like a calf at the doors of the sacred and divine tent, to open wide for us the way inside; he himself takes away our sins, as the prophet’s voice says (Isaiah 53:4). For this, I think, is what the laying of hands on the calf signifies. He himself entered the Holy of Holies through blood and obtained a holy redemption for us (Hebrews 9:12), and by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:14), as the blessed Paul says. He it is who sanctifies the Church by the sprinkling of his own blood, and does so abundantly. ‘For the priest,’ it says, ‘shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle some of the blood seven times with his finger before the Lord’ (Leviticus 4:6). ‘For we have come,’ it says, ‘to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the Church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than Abel’ (Hebrews 12:22–24). Abel’s blood cried out to God (Genesis 4:10), condemning the murderer; but the precious blood of Christ, the Savior of us all, speaks better things to God on our behalf, for it was poured out as the price given in exchange for the life of all. The blood of the calf was poured out at the base of the altar, for the death of Christ is truly holy and sacred. And the inward parts are offered up: the fat, the kidneys and the lobe of the liver. For everything in Christ is fragrant, both what is seen outwardly and what is hidden; for the Word was holy, and there was nothing in him that was not pure. But the skin and the rest are burned outside the gate, for the law does not leave even the place of his passion unmarked for us. That is why the divine Paul said to us: ‘Let us therefore go forth outside the gate, bearing his reproach’ (Hebrews 13:12–13), that is, the cross borne for us and because of us. And the Savior himself says somewhere: ‘Whoever does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me’ (Matthew 10:38). The most holy Paul seems to understand ‘outside the gate’ as ‘outside the world’, for the will to follow Christ takes us out of worldly life. Paul will bear witness again, for he said this about Christ: ‘Through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Galatians 6:14). And though the saints walk on the earth, they strive to live no longer in an earthly way, but rather to have their citizenship in heaven (Philippians 3:20).