Saint Cyril of Jerusalem: A True Catholic Educator Par Excellence

Dom Prosper Gueranger on Saint Cyril of Jerusalem and the True Purpose of Education

As a faithful son of Holy Mother Church, Dom Prosper Gueranger was uncompromisingly opposed to all error, including that of “civil education.” He summarized the essence of Catholic teaching on education in his reflection on the life of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, whose feast day is on March 18 annually, as he was dedicated to the instruction of catechists. The Abbot of Solesmes by noting modern society had denied Our Lord and thus was striving by the “hypocritical neutrality of its laws to stifle the divine seed in the baptized soul before it can grow and bear fruit”:

It was right that the Church should honor, during these days devoted to the instruction of the catechumens, the Pontiff whose very name suggests the zeal and knowledge which pastors ought to show in preparing candidates for baptism. He has long had a place in the Martyrology of the Western Church, but to-day, in addition to expressing our gratitude for what he did fifteen hundred years ago, we ask him for aid, which is as necessary now as it was in the first ages of Christianity. It is that that baptism is now administered to infants. The gift of faith then infused puts man in possession of all truth before his intelligence has ever met with falsehood. But it too often happens in our days that children are deprived of the protection their weakness really needs. Modern society has denied Jesus Christ, and strives by the hypocritical neutrality of its laws to stifle the divine seed in the baptized soul before it can grow and bear fruit. Baptism, however, has is rights with regard to society as well as with regard to the individual, and our best way of honouring St. Cyril is to remind ourselves on his feast that this first Sacrament has just claims in respect of the education due to the baptized. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, p. 410.)

Comment:

As we know, stifling of the “divine seed in the baptized soul” is not only the basis of secular education in the world today as the same thing is done in most elementary and secondary schools under the control of the conciliar revolutionaries and in every “mainstream” college and university they or their secular administrators oversee.

Catholic collegiate and university education used to integrate the truths of the Faith into every aspect of their academic programs. While non-Catholics who had a specialty in mathematics or science might have been hired from time to time to teach in their fields of competency, they were expected to familiarize themselves with how the Catholic Faith imbues all fields of knowledge, as Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri in 1929. Such scholars were also expected to remember that they were never to place in doubt the truths of the Catholic Faith, never to use their classrooms as a forum to profess that which was contrary to what the Catholic Church held was received teaching of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man, Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And Catholics who taught in Catholic universities and colleges understood that they had the obligation to be scholars who were faithful to the totality of the Deposit of Faith and to see in their students redeemed creatures who were looking to them, the faculty, for a model as to how to live the faith in the midst of one's own professional responsibilities. There was an integrity to the teaching of the Faith which flowed over into all aspects of a college or university.

Pope Pius XI noted the following in Divini Illius Magistri: 

This norm of a just freedom in things scientific, serves also as an inviolable norm of a just freedom in things didactic, or for rightly understood liberty in teaching; it should be observed therefore in whatever instruction is imparted to others. Its obligation is all the more binding in justice when there is question of instructing youth. For in this work the teacher, whether public or private, has no absolute right of his own, but only such as has been communicated to him by others. Besides every Christian child or youth has a strict right to instruction in harmony with the teaching of the Church, the pillar and ground of truth. And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false. 

In fact it must never be forgotten that the subject of Christian education is man whole and entire, soul united to body in unity of nature, with all his faculties natural and supernatural, such as right reason and revelation show him to be; man, therefore, fallen from his original estate, but redeemed by Christ and restored to the supernatural condition of adopted son of God, though without the preternatural privileges of bodily immortality or perfect control of appetite. There remain therefore, in human nature the effects of original sin, the chief of which are weakness of will and disorderly inclinations. (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

Pope Pius XI's words are very clear: "And whoever disturbs the pupil's Faith in any way, does him grave wrong, inasmuch as he abuses the trust which children place in their teachers, and takes unfair advantage of their inexperience and of their natural craving for unrestrained liberty, at once illusory and false." No one is free to lead himself or others into temptation. However, this is done every day in public and conciliar elementary and secondary schools, colleges, university and professional schools, and anyone who complains about this is said to be “intolerant.”

We pray every day in the Pater Noster that we will not be led into temptation (Et ne nos inducas in tentantionem). There is no "freedom" to deny or to put into question the truths contained in the Deposit of Faith. None. There is no "balancing" of the Faith and "academic freedom." "All sides" must must not be taught as equal to the Faith, as the late Richard Cardinal Cushing, an ardent Americanist and a fierce apologist for the Kennedys, argued during the first controversy involving Father Charles Curran in 1967 (Cushing on hearing all sides). Every Catholic must be faithful to the Deposit of Faith at all times. No one must be hired to teach in any Catholic education institution who dissents from even one iota of the truths of the Holy Faith. It is that simple.

What, then, is the Catholic understanding of academic freedom?

Again, the answer is simple. A Catholic understanding of academic freedom affords individual professors great latitude in presenting the truths of the Faith in accord with their own personalities and temperaments.

For example, we have different communities of religious men and women in the Church. Those communities, at least traditionally until they were infected with Modernism and the blight of perverse moral problems condemned in no uncertain terms by Saint Peter Damian, expressed the truths of the Faith in different ways. Each had different charisms and missions. The Benedictines, Cistercians, Servites, Blessed Sacrament Fathers, Holy Cross Fathers, Carmelites, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Pallotines, Vincentians, Salesians of Saint John Bosco, Holy Ghost Father, Remptorists and the Passionists—and countless others—served the cause of the sanctification and salvation of human souls in many and varied ways. In like manner, you see, two Catholic professors of the same subject matter might teach the same course in very different ways without ever once putting any truths of the Faith into question. That's a legitimate understanding of academic freedom.

For example, one professor might prefer the Socratic method of instruction, peppering his students with questions during class time to get them to discern and to defend the truth. Others, including me, prefer the lecture method of instruction. Neither is received from the hand of God. Both are legitimate forms of instruction.

Similarly, some professors may prefer students to respond at length to essay questions in order to demonstrate a profound grasp of the subject matter, more or less forcing the students to "teach" the reader of their essay about a question as though the reader knew nothing about the subject. Other professors may prefer short-answer essays to cover to variety of topics. Still others might desire students to answer "objective" questions (multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, which is one of my own favorite devices to test the breadth of student comprehension). Once again, none of these things are de fide. Professors and teachers should be given the widest latitude in the method of instruction and examination they believe will best inform and then challenge their students.

To be sure, there can be lively intellectual discussions and arguments among students and faculty members even when the Faith is transmitted in all of its purity and integrity. Catholic scholarship does not argue about what is true (no less about whether there is such a thing as truth). Rather, authentic Catholic scholars can and do argue, sometimes quite forcefully, about the application of received teaching in concrete circumstances.

What sort of governmental system is most conducive to the establishment of the Social Kingship of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?

Is the contemporary state by its very definition and composition a threat to the life of the Faith?

What particular policies are the best way to protect the primacy of the Divine positive law and the natural law?

What is the correct interpretation of a particular philosopher or a passage from a piece of literature or the correct translation to be used in a piece of scholarship?

These, and many other areas, constitute legitimate forms of academic freedom as understood by the Catholic Church.

What is inarguable, however, is the fact that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by our Lord upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and that He has revealed truths which are clear, certain and immutable. Anyone who argues about that is an abject heretic. Anyone who contends that an "opposition" to the Catholic Faith must be presented on equal terms with the Faith, as opposed to examining errors so as to be able to recognize and refute them (which is a necessary part of the educational process), is in league with the devil. No one has to be "fair" to the "opposition," as the instigator of the secularized "Catholic" university, the late University of Notre Dame president Father Theodore Hesburgh noted some years ago in The New York Times. (For a review of Hesburgh’s notorious career of revolutionary destruction, please see Leaving Behind A Legacy of Incalcuable Devastation.)

We must not be "fair" to the devil, the progenitor of all falsehoods. We learn about errors to refute them. For Catholics, you see, must be faithful to each and every one of the truths of the Faith without giving a moment's credibility to anything that is in opposition to those truths and thus harmful to the souls for whom Our Lord shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. Professors need to aspire to the holiness of Saint John Cantius, not the worldliness of our present day.

The late Father John A. Hardon, S.J,. said in a conference given at Saint Ignatius Loyola Church in New York, New York, in August of 1978 that the implantation of doubt in the souls of the young was a crime almost as great as that of killing an unborn child by abortion (whether by chemical or surgical means.) "To cause a young person to doubt the Faith is to help to abort that soul." Father noted, moving his head from side to side, looking straight as his audience for emphasis. Sadly, though, much of what passes for Catholic education (including elementary and secondary schools) in the conciliar structures does precisely this, doing so in the fallacious belief that there can be no true faith without doubt. While it is true that some people may have crises of faith in their own lives from time to time, we are not to encourage doubt. One of the spiritual works of mercy is precisely to counsel the doubting.

Contemporary Catholic higher education in conciliar captivity does more that encourage doubt. It actually does much to destroy the faith in the souls of students by the promotion of atheist, leftist, collectivist, relativist, statist, redistributionist, feminist, positivist, globalist, environmentalist, pantheistic, evolutionist, indifferentist and other naturalist ideologies, including those of the New Age ilk. Its participation in the rot of explicit instruction in matters pertaining to personal purity feeds the myth that human beings are beast who are incapable of controlling themselves by means of Sanctifying Grace, and more than a handful of practicing homosexuals and lesbians have been recruited into a lifestyle of perversity and self-destruction as a result of propaganda in favor of sodomy disseminated on the campuses of formerly Catholic colleges and universities (where openly pro-abortion and sodomite-friendly groups are permitted to meet and to participate in the life of those campuses).

Dom Prosper Gueranger’s observation, therefore, about the necessity of feeding the Faith in the souls of the baptized rather than stifling it has been turned on its head today as the conciliar revolutionaries have joined forces with the scions of Modernity to create a monstrous education system that mocks all things sacred and provides endless incentives to sin.

The Abbot of Solesmes then explained that the civil state supported the work of nurturing the seed of Baptismal Faith as this was important both to the individual and to the good of a well-ordered society that recognize the necessity of personal sanctity as the foundation of a just social order. Dom Prosper specifically noted that the “civil power joined with the Church to protect that plentitude of truth which was the greatest treasure of man”:

For fifteen centuries the western nations, whose social fabric rested on the solid rock of the faith of Rome, have enjoyed a happy ignorance of the difficulties experienced by a soul in rising out of the abyss of error into the pure light of truth. Our fathers, like ourselves, were baptized at their entrance into the world. They had, moreover, an advantage which we have not, for, in their day, the civil power joined with the Church to protect that plenitude of truth which was the greatest treasure of men, and the safeguard of the world. The protection of individuals is a duty binding upon all princes and rulers, whatever be their title, and this duty is greater in proportion to the interests to be safeguarded. But this protection gives greater glory to the power which exercises it, when it is extended to the lowly and the weak. The law of man never appears more majestic when standing beside a little child—a new-born babe or a defenceless orphan—to protect its name, its life or its inheritance. A newly-baptized child possesses advantages greater than all those given by noble birth, money or the richest natural gifts. He has a divine life within him; he is the equal of the angels in virtue of his name of Christian; his inheritance is that plentitude of truth of which we spoke above—God Himself, possessed by faith here below until the beatific vision opens out the possession of eternal love. What greatness there is in a little child! But what a responsibility for the world! If God does not wait for the age of reason before bestowing His gifts, this sublime haste is due to the impatience of His love, but at the same time He counts upon men to reveal in due time their dignity to these children of heaven, to form them to the duties incumbent upon them, and to educated them in a way befitting their divine lineage. The education of a king’s son corresponds to the dignity of his birth, and those who have the honor of being his tutors never forget that he is a prince. Instructions, common to all, are presented to him in a way which harmonizes with his exalted destiny, and everything is directed to rendering him capable of waring his crown with glory. Does the education of a child of God need less care? Is it right that his teachers should forget his birth and his destiny? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, pp. 410-412.)

Comment:

Yes, the civil power was once joined to that of Holy Mother Church as the latter formed good Christians, which is the prerequisite for right order in a civil society. The Sacrament of Baptism makes priests, prophets and kings, thus making today’s utilitarian system of supposed education filled with the plenitude of truth but with that of every error imaginable. Every falsehood is proposed as true and everything that is true and holy is denied, scorned and reviled, which is why the world is replete with unhappy people, many of whom have mutilated their bodies with grotesque images about which they are not only totally shameless but defiantly proud.

Societies must collapse and men must become slaves of the civil state once there are miseducated into believing that they are descended from apes and need nothing more in life than money, an array of carnal pleasures and a multiplicity of diversions that make the old bread and circuses offered by the Roman ceasars and their minions seem amateurish by way of comparison.

As Dom Prosper Gueranger explained, everything about education must be guided by the Holy Mother Church, and it is the duty of educators to integrate its truths into every fabric of their curriculum and instruction:

It is true that the Church alone can explain to us the ineffable origins of the sons of God. She alone knows how to use the elements of human knowledge for the supreme end which dominates the life of a Christian. The natural conclusion is, that the Church is by right the first and principal teacher of the nations. When she founds schools, she is on her own ground in all branches of knowledge, and a mission to teach from her is of more value than any diploma. Further, with regard to diplomas, which she herself has not conferred, these official commissions to teach draw their legal value, in the eyes of Christians, from her approval, and they are always by right subject to her supervision. She is the mother of the baptized, and even when a mother does not teach her own children, she has the right to supervise their education.

But the Church is not only the Mother of the Faithful, she is the Bride of the Son of God and the guardian of His sacraments. It is her duty to see that the Precious Blood has not been shed in vain. Our Lord has entrusted these seven fountains to the care of the ministers of His Church, and they must not be opened except when there is good reason to hope that the sacramental grace will be well used. Baptism especially, which raises man out of his own nothingness to a supernatural nobility, must be safeguarded in its administration with a prudence and watchfulness corresponding to the sublime and ineffaceable character which it confers. A baptized Christian who, through his own or others’ fault, is ignorant of his rights and duties, of a descendant of a noble race who, knowing nothing of his family traditions, is despised by his kinsmen and drags out an aimless existence in a station of life below that to which by birth he is entitled.

The Church is no less vigilant to-day than she was in the time of Cyril. She has never admitted—she cannot admit—anyone to the sacred font without requiring from him a sufficient instruction. An adult must give proof of his knowledge before he receives the Sacrament, and if the Church consents to receive an infant into the Christian family, It is because she considers that the Christian faith of those who present him to her and of the society in which they live will assure to him an education comfortable to the supernatural life which is about to given him.

Thus the baptism of infants could not become a general custom until the age of Jesus Christ was finally established upon earth. We must not be surprised to find that, as the conversion of the nations was gradually completed, the Church found herself alone in the work of education. The barren classes of grammarians, philosophers, and rhetorician, who taught everything but the one thing necessary—the end for which man was created—were deserted for the episcopal and monastic schools, where the science of salvation held the first place, radiating its light upon all other branches of knowledge. Knowledge, thus made Christian, gave birth to the Universities, and produced a fruitful union of the sciences which, until then, had been quite unconnected, if not opposed to one another. The Universities were unknown before the establishment of Christianity, for it alone could solve the problem of the union, which is the essence of University life, and hence they remain the inalienable domain of the Church. The State, which to-day is pagan once more, may deny to the Mother of the nations and claim for itself the right to give the name of University to its higher schools, but peoples, which have lost their Christianity, can never have the right to found nor the power to maintain those glorious institutions in the true spirit of the name they bear. A state without faith cannot maintain any union among the sciences but that of Babel. This is already evident. The monument of a pride which rises against God and His Church will only serve to bring back that terrible confusion of tongues from which the Church had matched the pagan peoples. Any thief or robber can assume the titles of the victim he has robbed, but his inability to display the qualities, which these titles suppose in their bearer, only serves to show more clearly that a theft has been committed. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V--Lent, p. 412-413.)

Comment:

The modern university did not exist until the Middle Ages, and it was founded by Holy Mother Church to provide that fruitful union of the sciences, which are unconnected once again in most colleges and universities around the world.

Yes, we have returned to Babel as we are surrounded by a terrible confusion of ideas, where most people are unwilling or unable to use their faculty of reason and, instead, live solely according to the passions. Most people today know nothing of truth but are filled with opinions, which they now have the capacity to “tweet” at will, that demonstrate that they possess the plentitude of ignorance.

Only the Holy Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church for its infallible explication and eternal safekeeping can provide men with a sober, clear-headed understanding of the world and their role in it.

Today’s scholars who live in ivory towers of Babel would are far removed from the Catholic understanding of a philosophy of history that is based entirely upon the integration of faith and reason, something that was elucidated by Father Denis Fahey in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

History is concerned with individual and contingent facts. In order to discern the supreme causes and laws of the events which historians narrate, we must  stand out from, and place ourselves above these events. To do this with certainty one should, of course, be enlightened by Him Who holds all things in the hollow of His hand. Unaided human reason cannot even attempt to give an account of the supreme interests at stake in the world, for the world, as it is historically, these interests are supernatural.

Human reason strengthened by faith, that is, by the acceptance of the information God has given us about the world through His Son and through the Society founded by Him, can attempt to give this account, though with a lively consciousness of its limitations. It is only when we shall be in possession of the Beatific Vision that the full beauty of the Divine Plan which is being worked out in the world will be visible to us. Until then, we can only make an imperfect attempt at what is not the philosophy, but the theology of history. The theologian who has the Catholic Faith is in touch with the full reality of the world, and can therefore undertake to show, however feebly and imperfectly, the interplay of the supreme realities of life.

The philosopher, as such, knows nothing about the reality of the divine life of Grace, which we lost by the Fall of our First Parents, and nothing of the Mystical Body of Christ through which we receive back that life. The philosophy of history, if it is to be true philosophy, that is, knowledge by supreme causes, must therefore be rather the theology of history. Yet how few, even among those who have the Catholic Faith, think of turning to the instructions and warnings issued by the representatives of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, when they wish to ascertain the root causes of the present chaotic condition of the world! (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World.)

It is only possible to understand the events of the world through the eyes of the true Faith, not through the mainslime media nor through the prism of Protestant "conspiracy" theorists who do not view the world through the eyes of the true Faith and who fail to understand that our ultimate enemy is not so much this or that set of no-goodniks or government agents. No, the utimate enemy is the devil himself, who uses various human actors to effect his purpoes and to keep people so agitated by questions of "whodunit" that they become incapable of understanding the world tis in the mess that it is because of the Protestant Revolution's overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King and the subsequent rise and institutionalization of the various branches of naturalism that can be termed collectively as Judeo-Masonry.

This is not to say that non-Catholic scholars cannot write history books that contain accurate accounts of various sets of contingent events at one time or another.

It is to say, however, that most scholarship and contemporary commentary today is relatively worthless because of the various ideological and/or false theological perspectives that are brought to bear upon the subjects and/or events covered, and this includes most of the commentary on the farce of Judeo-Masonry that is politics and governance in a world that is based upon a denial of the fact that the Word became Flesh and dwelt amongst us.

This is not the say that the civil state cannot “educate” infidels, as Dom Prosper Gueranger noted, but it is say that the results of such “education” have proven to disastrous for individuals and nations throughout the Western world. Indeed, the Abbot of Solesmes prophesied these horrible consequences over one hundred fifty years ago:

Are we, then, to deny to a state which is pagan, or as they say nowadays neutral, the right to educate the infidels which it has produced after its own image? No, the protection which is the right and duty of the Church extends only to the baptized. Moreover, if the Church finds one day that the state of society is no longer a sufficient guarantee for baptism, she will return to the discipline of the early ages, when the grace of this initial Sacrament was not granted indiscriminately to all, but only to those adults who had shown themselves to be worthy of it, or to infants whose families could give an assurance on which she could rely. The nations will then be once more divided into two classes—on the one side the children of God, living His life and heirs of His Kingship; on the other those men who have basely preferred to remain the slaves of the King, although by His Incarnation He has made His palace among the sons of Adam and desires to number them all among His children. An education which is common and neutral will then appear more impossible than ever. A training designed for the servants of his palace can never be suitable for the princes of the blood-royal.  

Are we drawing near to those times when men whom circumstances have unfortunately excluded from baptism at their entrance into this world will have to gain for themselves the privilege of admission into the Christian family? God alone knows, but more than one sign seems to point to it. It is possible that the institution of today’s feast [of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem] is designed by divine Providence to correspond with the new situation which will then be created for the Church. A week ago we paid our homage to St. Gregory the Great, the Doctor of the Christian people; three days earlier our Christian students were honoring St. Thomas Aquinas, the Doctor of the Schools, who do we celebrate to-day, after fifteen centuries, the Doctor of the Catechumens, a class which has now disappeared, if not because the Church sees that St. Cyril of Jerusalem is called to render her new services by his immortal Catechetical Instruction? Even now many wandering Christians have no greater obstacle in the way of their return to God than an ignorance as desperate as, and more profound than, that of the Jews and pagans to the time of Cyril. (pp. 410-415.)

Comment:

In truth, of course, very few men today, including most baptized Catholics, want to life the life of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man on this very day in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of God the Holy Ghost at the Annunciation. Most people today prefer to remain the slaves of the world, the flesh and the devil. As quoted earlier in this country, Pope Pius XI noted in Divini Illius Magistri, secular education must end in ruin for men and their nations. Indeed, our days are characterized by baptized Catholics who are victims of the twin, interrelated revolutions and cataclysmic forces of Modernity and Modernist who are wandering  about the world in a world and who “have no greater obstacle in the way of their return to God than an ignorance as desperate as, and more profound than, that of the Jews and pagans to the time of Cyril.” Most Catholics today live—and, tragically, they are likely to die—as though the Incarnation of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Immaculate and Virginal Womb of His Most Blessed Mother on this very day had never occurred.

“Education” as it exists in the world of Modernity has produced the exact results for which it has been designed, namely, to so corrupt public life and to throw it into such chaos and confusion that the masses will swoon when Antichrist’s One World Governance and One World Ecumenical Church become realities to which all are expected to submit or face fines, imprisonment and even execution.

Those who think that "education" can be an instrument of producing "good citizens" while ignoring the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and the whole of mankind's utter dependence upon that teaching authority and upon her sanctifying offices ought to reckon with this dialogue that Saint Gertrude the Great, the great apostle of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, had with Our Lord Himself:

"For what fault have you suffered most?" He replied: "For self-will and self-opinionatedness; for when I did any kindness for others, I would not do as they wished, but as I wished myself; and so much do I suffer for this, that if the mental agonies of all mankind were united in one person, he would not endure more than I do at present." She replied: "And what remedy will be the most efficacious for you?" He answered: "To perform acts of the contrary virtue, and to avoid committing the same fault." "But, in the meantime," inquired Gertrude, "what will afford you the greatest relief?" He replied: "The fidelity which I practiced toward others when on earth consoles me most. The prayers which are offered continually for me by many friends solace me as good news would solace a person in affliction. Each tone of the chant at Mass, or in the vigils which are said for me, seem to me as a most delicious reflection. All that is done for me by others, with a pure intention for God's glory, such as working, and even sleeping or eating, affords me great relief and shortens my sufferings, on account of the fidelity with which I labored for others." (The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude the Great, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, p. 341.)

How willing are we to enslave ourselves to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary our Queen? How eager are we to carry our daily crosses, recognizing that there is nothing that we can suffer in this passing, mortal vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer during His Passion and Death and caused His Most Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be pierced through and through with Seven Swords of Sorrow?

How willing are we to make time to pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permit?

How willing are we to be as generous with God as possible by voluntarily renouncing the world and its pleasures so as to seek first His Kingdom?

How ready are we to meet Him at the moment of our own Particular Judgments, which can occur at any time, especially in this world of neo-barbarism in which we find ourselves?

The readings found in Matins for today's feast describe the life of Saint Cyril of Jersualem in summary form:

Cyril of Jerusalem was given to the study of the Holy Scriptures from a child, and so learnt therein that he became an eminent champion of the orthodox faith. He embraced the monastic institute in perpetual continency, and all hardship of living. He was ordained Priest by holy Maximus, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and undertook with eminent success the task of preaching the word of God to the faithful and of instructing the catechumens. Thus did he compose those truly wonderful Catecheses, wherein he has embraced, clearly and fully, all the teaching of the Church, and stoutly defended every one of her doctrines against the enemies of the faith. His treatment of these subjects was such that he has overthrown therein, not only the heresies which had then come into being, but, by a kind of foreknowledge, even those which were to arise in later times. Of this an instance is his contention for the real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the wondrous Sacrament of the Eucharist. After the death of holy Maximus, the bishops of the province chose Cyril in his place.

In his office of Bishop he had for the faith's sake, like his blessed contemporary Athanasius, tto endure many wrongs and sufferings at the hands of the Arian sect. The Arians could not bear that Cyril should steadfastly withstand their heresy. They assailed him with calumnies, deposed him in a pretended council, and drove him out of his see. To escape their rage he fled to Tarsus in Cilicia, and as long as Constantius lived he bore the hardships of exile. After his death and the accession to the imperial throne of the Apostate Julian, Cyril was able to return to Jerusalem, where he set himself with burning zeal to deliver his flock from false doctrine and from sin. He was driven into exile a second time under the Emperor Valens. But when peace was restored to the Church by Theodosius the Great, and the cruelty and insolence of the Arians were restrained, Cyril was received with honour by the Emperor as one of Christ's most eminent soldiers, and was restored to his see. With what earnestness and holiness he fulfilled the duties of his exalted office was made manifest by the flourishing state of the church of Jerusalem at that time, of which a picture hath been left for us by holy Basil, who dwelt there for a while when he went to worship at the holy places.

Tradition hath handed down that God Himself crowned with signs from heaven the holiness of this venerable Patriarch. Among these signs is numbered an apparition of a cross, more resplendent than the beams of the sun, which appeared at the beginning of his Patriarchate. Not only Cyril himself, but heathens and Christians alike were eye-witnesses of this marvel, and Cyril first gave thanks to God therefore in the church, and then sent news thereof by letter to the Emperor Constantius. A thing no less wonderful came to pass when the Jews were commanded by the profane Emperor Julian to attempt the restoration of the temple which had been destroyed by Titus. A great earthquake arose, and great masses of fire broke forth from the earth and consumed all the works, so that the Jews and Julian were dismayed and stayed their hand, all the which it can be proved that Cyril had foretold. A little while before his death he was present at the second Council of Constantinople; herein was condemned the heresy of Macedonius, and once more the Arian heresy. After his return to Jerusalem he died a holy death in the 69th year of his age and the 35th of his episcopate. The Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII. commanded that his office and Mass should be celebrated throughout the universal Church. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.)

Heresy and error never just “go away.” They must be fought by Catholics, who are soldiers in the Army of Christ by virtue of the Sacrament of Confirmation. Saint Cyril of Jerusalem understood this, which is why he fought vigorously against heresy and error and to provide catechumens with proper instructions in the Holy Faith so that they could withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil to stain their baptismal gown and thus to be more prone to embrace heresy and error.

The Abbot of Solesmes’s prayer to our saint, bishop and doctor will give us encouragement in a bloodthirsty world shaped by a rejection of the very true Faith that Saint Cyril fought so hard to defend and to propagate:

Thou wert a true child of the light, O Cyril. Thou didst give thy heart to Holy Wisdom, while yet a child, and she set thee up as a lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour to be the guide of unfortunate souls tossing on the sea of error. The Church confided to thee the mission of preparing for baptism those happy multitudes whom her recent victory had won for her from all ranks of society, and this mission was to be accomplished in a century rich in holy doctors and in the region consecrated by the mysteries of our redemption. Thou wast nourished by Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Mother of all mankind, and thy words flowed pure and abundant as water from a spring. History tells us that the many duties of thy holy ministry would not permit thee to devote thyself exclusively to the Catechumens, and thus thou wert led to improvise those admirable instructions wherein the science of salvation was the knowledge of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, contained in the creed of the Holy Church. Preparation for baptism, for life, for the love of God, was the acquisition of this knowledge, so deep, so far-reaching and so necessary. It was to be acquired, not by the impression of vain sentimentality, but the reception of the word of God in the right spirit, and by constant meditation, so that the souls comes to be firmly established in the fullness of truth, in moral rectitude, and in hatred of evil.

Thou wast sure of thy hearers and didst not fear to unveil before their eyes the arguments and abominable devices of their secret enemies. There are times and circumstances, only to be judged by the shepherds of the flock, when it is necessary to disregard the revulsion of feeling caused by such revelations in order to denounce the danger and warn the sheep against intellectual or moral scandals. Thus, O Cyril, thy invectives pursued Manicheism to its utmost secret haunts. Thou didst see in this heresy the principal agent of that mystery of iniquity which pursues its path of darkness and destruction throughout the ages, until it shall bring the world to decay. In these times the Manichee triumphs openly. The societies founded by him have gained power. The secret of the Lodges still hides from the uninitiated the sacrilegious symbols and dogmas brought once from Persia, but the prince of this world has cleverly united all social forces in the hands of this ally. The first use he makes of his power is attack the Church out of hatred for Christ. He assails her fruitfulness by denying her right to reach what she has received from her divine Head. The children, whom she has brought forth and who are hers in virtue of their baptism, are snatched from her by main force, and she is forbidden to preside over their education. Thou didst understand so well the claims of the sacrament of regeneration. Protect the baptism of so many innocent souls in which men seek to stifle the germ. Strengthen and rekindle the faith of Christian parents and even then that if it is their duty to defend their children from death at the risk of their own bodies, they must remember that the souls of these little ones are still more precious. It has greatly consoled us to see how many have understood this and, faithful to the dictates of their conscience, have suffered violence rather than yield to the regulations of a pagan state. Bless also, strengthen and multiply those faithful souls who devote themselves to the instruction of poor children whose spiritual interests are betrayed by the secular power. There is no mission to-day more urgent than that of catechists, and none, surely, dearer to thy heart.

Holy Church has just related to us the apparition of the holy Cross, which marked the beginning of thy episcopate, and similar marvels have been witnessed in our own time. But the apparition in thy day announced a triumph—the triumph thou didst foresee when St. Helena discovered the three of our redemption, the triumph which, at the time of thy death, had been confirmed by the fulfilled of the prophecies concerning the Jewish Temple. Can it be that our times are to witness only defeat and ruin? We have confidence in thy aid, O holy Pontiff. We remember that the triumph which thou didst witness was brought by the sufferings of the whole Church, in which thou thyself didst share by thy thrice-repeated deposition and twenty years of exile. The Cross, whose great anniversary is not approaching, is not conquered, but triumphs in the sufferings of the faithful and their patient endurance. It will appear once more, a sign of eternal victory, over the ruins of the world on the Day of Judgment. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume V, Lent, pp. 419-420.)

It is the Faith that matters, the entire Faith without any compromises, now and for all eternity.

Aren't we willing to suffer some more for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state in life permits?

Relying upon the help of Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, may we always lift high the standard of the Holy Cross in our own lives so that our soul will be in ruins when the day of the Particular Judgment comes for us. 

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us! 

Saint Joseph, pray for us. 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us. 

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us. 

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us. 

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us. 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us. 

Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, pray for us.