St. Cyril of Alexandria

If you, my dear readers, have been trying to follow this article, you have already gotten a sense of the struggle the early Church went through in order to come to some real understanding of Who Christ IS and what exactly happened to Him. St. Cyril, like many of the Fathers, came to the conclusion that the glory of the body of Christ, as revealed at the Transfiguration, should be regarded as a preview of His Resurrection glory, not as it was revealed to Thomas and the others immediately following the Resurrection, but as it was revealed to them from the Ascension onwards.

This does not mean, of course, that the body of Christ had not already been glorified at the time of the Resurrection. On the contrary, the Fathers and Cyril maintain that Christ, if He so desired, could have revealed His body in “its due and proper glory” immediately following His Resurrection; but that His disciples would not have been able to bear such a manifestation before Christ’s Ascension to the Father – before, that is, the disciples had received the gift of the Holy Spirit. Cyril illustrates this point by referring to the reaction of the three disciples on the mount, who were unable to endure the vision of the transfigured Christ.

Interestingly, Cyril also maintains that Christ breathed the Holy Spirit on His disciples on the first day of His Resurrection (John 20:22). Now this at first sight appears to suggest that the disciples, well before the Ascension, were in fact ready for the vision of Christ in glory. But this, according to Cyril, is not the case. It is clear that the period between the Resurrection and the Ascension is viewed by Cyril as one of preparation for the disciples. (At this point the dynamic nature of the life in Christ in Cyril becomes apparent). Cyril says that the Holy Spirit had been dwelling in and sanctifying the disciples since the first appearance of Christ in Jerusalem, so as to prepare them for the Ascension – the vision of Christ glorified – Pentecost, and all that was to follow. In Cyril it is the Transfiguration glory that is a foreshowing of that vision of Christ glorified which man has been capable of receiving ever since the Ascension. Therefore, the Ascension marks for Cyril a most important turning point in the history of man’s receptiveness to the vision of God.

This, I know, may be difficult to understand. It highlights the lengths to which the Fathers went in order to truly understand Who Jesus, the Christ, IS.