St. Cyril of Alexandria

As you, my readers, have probably already decided, Cyril is not necessarily easy to understand. In the last issue I shared with you that in Cyril it is the Transfiguration glory that is a foreshadowing of that vision of Christ glorified which man has been capable of receiving since the Ascension. He   advanced this idea as he presented his ideas about the resurrection of the human body. There is a fascinating corollary to Cyril’s assertion: that man is, subsequent to the Ascension, capable of both receiving and enduring the vision of Christ glorified. Explicit scriptural accounts of post-Ascension visions of Christ are relatively few. Most of these are either directly or indirectly connected with the Conversion of Paul. They are: the Martyrdom of Stephen the Protodeacon; the Conversion of Saul; the Vision of Ananias; the Foundation of the Church in Corinth; Paul’s Vision in the Temple; and following Paul’s appearance before the Sanhedrin; to which an explicit reference to the vision of Christ in 2   Corinthians 4:6 may be added. Also, the Vision of John the Divine in Revelation. One must compare 1 Corinthians 15:   5-8 where Paul makes no distinction between the visions of Christ during the period between the Resurrection and the Ascension and his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. However, it is also true that Paul at the time of this vision had not yet received the Holy Spirit. This would constitute an exception among these references to the vision of Christ in glory, since, in accordance with Cyril’s view of the scheme of things, Paul’s own spiritual state at that time could have been no more advanced than that of the three disciples at the Transfiguration. Indeed, this would account for his inability to endure the revelation, and his resulting blindness – elements which are not present in other instances of post-Ascension visions of Christ. None the less, Paul’s vision was one of Christ glorified. Moreover, it would also follow that these post-Ascension visions of Christ are regarded as examples of what must have been the common experience of all the apostles.

The Resurrection of Christ, together with His Ascension signify, firstly, the glorification of the human nature of Christ Himself – of His human body and soul. And secondly, they reveal the intended glorification of our whole human person, our whole hypostasis – soul and body.

I am sure that most of us have never even thought about this. What will we be like after death