Cyril of Jerusalem is a revered figure in the Palestinian Christian community and is one of the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church.

Cyril was born around the year 313 AD, the same year in which Christianity was declared legal in the Roman Empire when Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. According to Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Cyril was a well-educated young man, who grew up in or near the city of Jerusalem. He was educated in classical Greek philosophy and read Christian Scripture and the Church Fathers. Around 350 AD, Cyril became the bishop of Jerusalem. During the fourth century, Christian thinkers were wrestling with many different strands of thought, and discerning which were orthodox and which were heretical. These philosophical and theological debates caused tensions between the different Christian communities.

Cyril had a particularly fraught relationship with the bishop of Caesarea, the beautiful Mediterranean town to the north of Jerusalem, where Herod the Great had built his luxurious palace. The Bishop of Caesarea, Acacius, is characterized as an Arian bishop (meaning a bishop who subscribed to the belief that Jesus was not eternally begotten by the Father before time began), and Cyril was an orthodox Christian, which probably contributed to their strained relationship. Additionally, during the fourth century, Jerusalem, originally a smaller episcopal see, began rising in prominence, as Constantine and Helena discovered the true cross, the site of Golgotha, and the legality of Christianity led to increased building of shrines, churches, and floods of pilgrims coming from all over the empire to this small section of the Mediterranean coastline.

Acacius accused Cyril of selling Church valuables—vestments and imperial gifts—without permission. During the 350s, there was a famine in Jerusalem, and Cyril is supposed to have sold Church treasures to buy food for his people. Acacius had Cyril deposed in 357 by a council of bishops sympathetic to Acacius. In 359, Cyril was restored to his see—only to suffer a continual stream of exiles and returns as various emperors ascended and descended from the throne.

Perhaps, as a result of finding himself at the mercy of powers outside of himself, Cyril’s writings focus on the loving and forgiving nature of our merciful God. The Holy Spirit, writes Cyril, “comes with the tenderness of a true friend to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, and to console.” His writing was used to instruct those preparing for Baptism in the Christian faith. Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures still inspire and encourage Christians to this day:

As Christ after His Baptism, and the visitation of the Holy Ghost, went forth and vanquished the adversary, so likewise ye, after Holy Baptism and the Mystical Chrism, having put on the whole armor of the Holy Ghost, are to stand against the power of the adversary, and vanquish it, saying, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

Finally, in 378, Cyril returned to his beloved hometown and remained there until his death in 386AD. He was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo XIII in 1883.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, an early witness to the sacred sites of Christian devotion—pray for us!