Post #6433

Returned to Alexandria, and being dead the uncle Theophilus, the still young Cyril was elected bishop of that patriarcal see in 412: in which office he always showed so well in himself the type of the perfect shepherd outlined by the Apostle, that he rightfully acquired the reputation of most holy prelate. Enflamed by the zeal for the salvation of souls, he put all cares on maintaining in integrity the faith and costumes of the given flock and to preserve them from the poisoned pastures of the infidels and of the heretics. Hence he endeavored to expel the followers of Novatus from the city and to punish, according to the law, the Jews who, in their frenzy, had conspired to massacre the Christians. But, since 428, the zeal of Cyril for the integrity of the Catholic faith showed itself especially against Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who, rejecting the divinity of the maternity of Holy Mary, with this he came to undermine the domain of the hypostatic union of the divine Word with human nature taken from the Holy Virgin; in fact, the heretic Nestorius pretended that Jesus Christ born from the Virgin Mary was only man and not God, and that the divinity was given accorded by the virtue of his merits. After trying in vain to reduce him to resipiscence, Cyril denounced him to the supreme Pontiff St. Celestine I. By the delegation of pope St. Celestine I, he presided at the Council of Ephesus (431), when the Nestorian heresy was entirely outlawed, Nestorius condemned and deposed from his See, and the Catholic dogma of only one and divine person in Christ, and the maternal divinity of the glorious Virgin Mary was proclaimed. Informed by the result of the Council and the victory of Orthodoxy, the entire people, to manifest the unstoppable joy, accompanied the bishops with lit torches. But, caused by all this, Cyril had in fact to suffer slanders, insults and many persecutions from Nestorius and his supporters; he bore them with the utmost patience, so that, solicitous only by faith, he considered everything the heretics said and engineered against him to be nothing. Finally, after supporting for the Church of God the greatest labors, and having been published many writings both in refutation of pagans and heretics and in explanation of the Holy Scriptures and of the Catholic dogma, he ended his earthly life in a holy way and passed to the glory of the Saints, in Alexandria of Egypt on the 27th of June in the year 444, in the thirtieth according to his episcopacy. The Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church on the 28th of July 1882, extending the Office and Holy Mass of this most illustrious champion of the Catholic faith and luminary of the Eastern Church to the whole Church, and at the same time ordering that throughout the world Catholic if the feast were celebrated on February 9th.