St Cyril of Alexandria Commentary on Luke (First Part)

Translated by R. Payne Smith

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This Part: 128 Pages

Page 124

And that this saying is true, we may perceive even from what takes place among us. For such as present petitions to those who preside over affairs upon earth, and govern mighty thrones, preface their requests with suitable praises, and confess their universal power and majesty; addressing the memorial they present, "To the Lords of earth, and sea, and of every people and race among mankind:" and afterwards they add an account of what they would ask. The father therefore of the demoniac was rude and uncourteous: for he did not simply ask the healing of the child, and in so doing crown the healer with praises, but, on the contrary, spake contemptuously of the disciples, and found fault with the grace given them. "For I brought him, he says, to Thy disciples, and they could not cast it out." And yet it was owing to thy own want of faith that the grace availed not. Dost thou not perceive that thou wast thyself the cause that the child was not delivered from his severe illness?

For that we must have faith when we draw near to Christ, and whosoever have obtained from Him the grace of healing, He teaches us Himself, by everywhere requiring faith of those who approach Him, desiring to be counted worthy of any of His gifts. For, for instance, Lazarus died at Bethany, and Christ promised to raise him. When then one of his sisters doubted of this, and had no expectation that the miracle would take place, Christ said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in Me, even though he die, shall live." And we find elsewhere a similar occurrence. For Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue of the Jews, when his only daughter was now breathing her last, being caught, so to speak, in the meshes of death, besought Jesus to deliver the damsel from what had happened: and Christ accordingly promised so to do upon arriving at the house of the supplicant. But as He was on His way, a man met Him from the relatives of the ruler of the synagogue, saying, "Thy daughter is dead: trouble not the Teacher." And what was Christ's reply? "Fear not: only believe, and she shall live."

It was the duty therefore of the father of the lad rather to lay the blame upon his own unbelief, than upon the holy apostles. For this reason Christ justly called out, "O faithless and perverse generation: how long shall I be with you, and suffer you?" He justly therefore calls both the man himself, and those like him in mind a faithless generation. For it is a wretched malady, and whosoever is seized by it is, as He shews, perverse, and utterly without knowledge to walk uprightly. And therefore the sacred Scriptures say of such persons, "that their ways are crooked, and their paths perverse." From this malady the divine David fled: and in order that he may also benefit us, he reveals the set purpose of his mind thereupon, saying, "A crooked heart hath not cleaved unto me:" that is, one that cannot walk in an upright course. To such the blessed Baptist, as the forerunner of the Saviour, cried, saying, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight."

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