In the fi rst of his Mystagogics, already explored in brief, Cyril makes clear that the human soul, representing most basically all that is immaterial in humanity, is purifi ed of its sins (through the means, as he states there, of the exorcisms per- formed prior to the immersion) and, thus purged, thereby possesses salvation.91
Later he elaborates more fully that
no one should imagine that baptism only confers the forgiveness of sins and the grace of adoption, just as John’s baptism only conferred the forgiveness of sins (cf. Matthew 3.11; Luke 3.3). We should be clear about this: that just as baptism cleans away our sins and conveys the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so too it represents Christ’s sufferings [lit. ‘is the antitype of Christ’s sufferings’92].
This is the meaning of Paul’s words which you heard proclaimed just now: ‘Do you not understand that we who were baptised into Christ Jesus were all baptised into his death? So we were buried with him through baptism’ (Romans 6.3, 4). Perhaps in writing this he had in mind people who believed that baptism conveys forgiveness of sins and adoption, but didn’t yet realise that it contains a share by imitation in what Christ suffered in reality.93
It is not simply through the remission of sins effected in the baptismal exorcisms and washing that the human person ‘possesses salvation’, but through the receipt thereby of the Holy Spirit as a ‘gift’, which unites the person fully to Christ – not only in life but in death and sacrifi ce. The Spirit brings to the personal existence and experience of the one baptized, the life-through-death of the one who is ‘healer’ and able to cure human defi ciency.94 It is the Holy Spirit who, in Cyril’s
articulation, anoints the baptized person with the life of the Son, the life of eternal
89 See Pro. 4; 22.
90 Pro. 1.
91 See M. Cat. 1.1; Pro. 9.
92 Cf. Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem n. 7 to p. 174.
93 M. Cat. 2.6. 94 Cf. Cat. 12.1.
and perfect relation to the Father who ‘is in everything and outside everything’,95
yet whose wisdom, power and justice are ever substantial in the Son to whom the Spirit joins the person.96 As such, the working of the Spirit in the baptismal
mystery is in a direct sense ‘Christoform’: it is the Spiritual working in humanity’s spiritual aspect (the soul) of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. This is made explicit in Cyril’s explanation of chrismation with oil after the baptism proper:
These rites [the anointing of Solomon by the high priest, cf. 1 Kings 1.38, 39] were performed for them as a prefi guration (typikôs), but for you not as a pre- fi guration but in reality, because your salvation began with the one who was anointed in reality by the Holy Spirit. For he is truly the fi rstfruits and you are the whole lump (cf. Romans 11.16). If the fi rstfruits are holy, it is clear that the holiness will spread to the whole lump.97
The salvation received through the anointing with chrism is, for Cyril, the salva- tion of the one whose anointing was of the Spirit not conveyed in oil, but des- cending in the form of a dove (cf. Matthew 3.16; Luke 3.23). The Spirit by whom the person is sealed at chrismation is received in likeness to the incarnate and baptized Son.
Cyril expresses the receipt of new life in baptism as the purifying of the soul of its sin, by which the soul is made ‘heavenly’, refl ecting the sinlessness of God. This ‘making heavenly’ of the soul is followed by the in-dwelling of the Spirit, not just in the person’s soul, but in the whole of her being – body and soul together. For ‘if the body co-exists with a holy soul, it becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit’.98 This lot, of being a temple in receipt of the holiness conveyed by the in-
dwelling of the Spirit, is a requirement for the fullness of life, ‘for every rational creature needs the holiness that comes from him’.99 Drawing out an explicit litur-
gical connection, Cyril emphasizes that it is only in such a state of received holi- ness that there is authenticity to the bishop’s words in the Liturgy, ‘the holy things are for the holy’, for ‘the offerings are holy, since they have received the descent of the Holy Spirit, and you are holy too, because you have been granted the Holy Spirit’.100 Predictably, it is not a ‘generic holiness’ that is imparted to the person
in receiving this ‘gift of the Spirit’, but the holiness of the life of the Father’s Son. Cyril makes quick to point out that this liturgical proclamation by the bishop is met with the people’s response, ‘One is holy, one is Lord: Jesus Christ’,
95 Cat. 4.5. 96 See Cat. 4.7. 97 M. Cat. 3.6. 98 Cat. 4.23; cf. 1 Corinthians 6.19. 99 Cat. 4.16. 100 M. Cat. 5.19.
for truly there is one who is holy, holy by nature; for though we are holy, we are not so by nature, but by participation and discipline and prayer.101
It is the holiness of the one, and one alone, who is ‘holy by nature’ that is imparted to the person ‘by participation’ through receipt of the Holy Spirit. It is in the ‘put- ting on’ of Christ that comes by the Spirit in baptism and anointing, that those ‘shaped to the likeness of Christ’s glorious body’ at last become fully the living images of the Son of God.102