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Translated by R. Payne Smith
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 37
4:14. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit unto Galilee.
Having left the habitations of cities, He dwelt in deserts: there He fasted, being tempted of Satan; there He gained victory in our behalf: there He crushed the heads of the dragons: there, as the blessed David says, "The swords of the enemy utterly failed, and cities were destroyed," that is, those who were like towers and cities. Having therefore mightily prevailed over Satan, and having crowned in His own person man's nature with the spoils won by the victory over him, He returned unto Galilee in the power of the Spirit, both exercising might and authority, and performing very many miracles, and occasioning great astonishment. And He wrought miracles, not as having deceived the grace of the Spirit from without and as a gift, like the company of the saints, but rather as being by nature and in truth the Son of God the Father, and taking whatever is His as His own proper inheritance. For He even said unto Him, "That all that is Mine is Thine, and Thine Mine, and I am glorified in them." He is glorified therefore by exercising as His own proper might and power that of the consubstantial Spirit.
4:16. And He came to Nazareth: and entered into the synagogue.
Since therefore it was now necessary that He should manifest Himself to the Israelites, and that the mystery of His incarnation should now shine forth to those who knew Him not, and inasmuch as He was now anointed of God the Father for the salvation of the world, He very wisely orders this also, [viz. that His fame should now spread abroad.] And this favour He grants first to the people of Nazareth, because, humanly speaking, He had been brought up among them. Having entered, therefore, the synagogue, He takes the book to read: and having opened it, selected a passage in the prophets, which declares the mystery concerning Him. And by these words He most plainly Himself tells us by the voice of the prophet, that He both would be made man, and come to save the world. For we affirm, that the Son was anointed in no other way than by having become according to the flesh such as we are, and taken our nature. For being at once God and man, He both gives the Spirit to the creation in His divine nature, and receives it from God the Father in His human nature; while it is He Who sanctifies the whole creation, both as having shone forth from the Holy Father, and as bestowing the Spirit, Which He Himself pours [6] forth, both upon the powers above as That Which is His own, and upon those moreover who recognised His appearing.
4:18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; therefore He hath anointed Me: He hath sent Me to preach the Gospel to the poor.
He plainly shews by these words that He took upon Him the humiliation and submission to the emptying (of His glory), and both the very name of Christ and the reality for our sakes: for the Spirit, He says, which by nature is in Me by the sameness of Our substance and deity, also descended upon Me from without. And so also in the Jordan It came upon Me in the form of a dove, not because It was not in Me, but for the reason for which He anointed Me. And what was the reason for which He chose to be anointed? It was our being destitute of the Spirit by that denunciation of old, "My Spirit shall not abide in these men, because they are flesh."
6.[m] As the Greek Church denies the procession of the Spirit from the Son, and says that it is not taught by their Fathers; and as S. Cyril in a previous passage, (cf. c. iii. v. 21.), speaks as if he held, that though the Spirit is the Son's, yet that It proceeds from the Father only, this passage is of great value, and therefore I append the original. Τὸ ἐξ αὐτοῦ προχεόμενον πνεῦμα ταῖς ἄνω δυνάμεσιν ἐνιεὶς ὡς ἑαυτοῦ. Another passage to the same effect will be found in the treatise against Nestorius, vol. vi. pp. 98, 99, where S. Cyril thus comments on Luke x. 19.: "The Spirit, therefore, is His own, and from Him: of which a plain proof is, that He can give It to others also, and that not by measure, as the blessed Evangelist says. For the supreme God has measured out to the saints the grace of the Spirit, giving to one the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge; to another the gift of healings: and this is, I think, the meaning of those thus endowed having the power by measure. But our Lord Jesus Christ, pouring out the Spirit of His own fulness, even as doth also the Father, gives it, not as by measure to those who are worthy to receive it." A more full account of the teaching of the Fathers upon the procession of the Holy Ghost, may be seen in Owen's Introduction to Dogmatic Theology, pp.169-178.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/luke-commentary.asp?pg=37
