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St. Cyril of Jerusalem on the Second Coming
In Lent, around the year 350, the bishop of Jerusalem taught the men and women who were preparing for Baptism what the Creed means when it says that Christ “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” He told them plainly about the Antichrist, not to frighten them, but so that no one would ever deceive them.
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At a glance
| Who | St. Cyril (c. 315–386), bishop of Jerusalem, the city of the Lord's death and Resurrection |
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| Standing | Father of the Church Doctor of the Church declared by Pope Leo XIII in 1883 |
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| The work | The Catechetical Lectures, given about 350: eighteen instructions to catechumens during Lent, and five more to the newly baptized in Easter week. Lecture 15 explains the article of the Creed on Christ's coming in glory and his kingdom that will have no end. |
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| Translation | Edwin Hamilton Gifford, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, as revised at New Advent. Section numbers are given as 15.1, 15.2, and so on. |
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| Weight | A bishop handing on the faith of the Church to new Christians. His outline of the last things agrees with the other Fathers; a few details, such as the rebuilt Temple and the end of the Roman Empire, are opinions of his time. |
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Why Cyril matters here
Cyril is not writing a commentary or a treatise. He is a pastor teaching beginners, and that shapes everything. He wants them to love Christ who is coming, to know the signs well enough that no false Christ can fool them, and to live now in a way that will let them stand before the Judge without fear. That is the purpose of this whole site, and Cyril did it sixteen centuries ago.
His lecture also shows what the early Church held in common: two comings of Christ, a final deceiver who comes before the second, a short persecution, and the certain victory of the Lord (CCC 668–679).
The lecture, step by step
“We preach not one advent only of Christ, but a second also, far more glorious than the former.”
- Teaching
- Cyril sets the two comings side by side: “In His former advent, He was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger; in His second, He covers Himself with light as with a garment.” In the first “He endured the Cross, despising shame”; in the second “He comes attended by a host of Angels, receiving glory.” The one who comes to judge is the one who came to save.
- Why two labels
- The first coming is fulfilled; the second is still to come. The Church lives between them (CCC 671).
“…but as to the time let no one be curious.”
- Teaching
- Cyril follows the Lord's words in Matthew 24: wars, famines, earthquakes, false prophets, the love of many growing cold. He repeats Jesus' first warning, “See that no one deceives you” (Matthew 24:4), in his own words, “Take heed that no man mislead you,” and adds the Lord's call, “Watch, for in such an hour as you expect not the Son of Man comes.” Against false messiahs he gives a simple rule: “if they say, Lo, here is the Christ, Lo, there, believe it not.”
- In his own day
- He saw the falling away already at work in the controversies of the fourth century: “And formerly the heretics were manifest; but now the Church is filled with heretics in disguise” (15.9). Yet he refused to say the end had come: “Whether they will happen in your time we know not, or whether they will happen after you we know not; but it is well that, knowing these things, you should make yourself secure beforehand.”
- Why unfolding
- The signs Jesus named have marked every age of the Church; their full measure belongs to the end. Cyril's refusal to fix the time is the Church's own rule (CCC 673; Matthew 24:36).
“…brings in a certain man who is a magician, and most expert in sorceries and enchantments of beguiling craftiness…”
- Teaching
- As the devil once spread fables of false gods before the true God was born of the Virgin, Cyril says, so before Christ's second coming he will put forward a counterfeit Christ. This man “shall seize for himself the power of the Roman empire, and shall falsely style himself Christ.” He will begin with “a show of mildness,” then by “the lying signs and wonders of his magical deceit” win followers, and then turn cruel, above all toward Christians (15.11–12). Cyril takes the ten kings and the eleventh who humbles three from Daniel 7, and says where he learned it: “Now these things we teach, not of our own invention, but having learned them out of the divine Scriptures” (15.13).
- His reign is short: “And after perpetrating such things for three years and six months only, he shall be destroyed” by the glorious coming of Christ (15.12; compare Daniel 7:25; 2 Thessalonians 2:8). Cyril even says that the martyrs of that time will be the greatest, because they will face not only men but Satan in person: “For I say that the Martyrs of that time excel all martyrs” (15.17).
- The Temple
- Reading Paul's words that the lawless one will “seat himself in the temple of God” (2 Thessalonians 2:4) literally, Cyril expects the deceiver to court the Jews by posing as “the man of the race of David, who shall build up the Temple which was erected by Solomon” (15.15). This is Cyril's opinion, shared by some Fathers. St. Augustine later thought it uncertain whether the “temple” meant the ruins in Jerusalem or the Church (City of God 20.19).
- What has not come to pass
- Cyril wrote that the Antichrist “is to come when the times of the Roman empire shall have been fulfilled, and the end of the world is now drawing near” (15.12). The Western Roman Empire fell in the next century, and the end did not come. Like other Fathers, he expected the end to be near; the Church holds only that it is always near in the sense that it could come at any time, and that its hour is known to the Father alone (CCC 673).
- The Church's teaching
- What the Church does hold is the core of Cyril's outline: before Christ's return the Church must pass through a final trial, and “the supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist” (CCC 675). This page, like the Church, names no one as the Antichrist. See 2 Thessalonians 2:3–5 and Daniel 7.
“Guard yourself then, O man; you have the signs of Antichrist; and remember them not only yourself, but impart them also freely to all.”
- Teaching
- Here Cyril's purpose shows most clearly. He has explained the signs so that his hearers will recognize the false Christ and not follow him. Then he turns to the family: “If you have a child according to the flesh, admonish him of this now,” to “put him also on his guard, lest he receive the false one as the True.” Knowing the truth is a protection to be shared, not a secret to be hoarded.
- Why unfolding
- Every generation of Christians is called to hand on the faith whole, including what it teaches about the last things, so that the next generation is ready.
“Now Christ's own true sign is the Cross; a sign of a luminous Cross shall go before the King…”
- Teaching
- Jesus said, “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven” (Matthew 24:30). Cyril, preaching in the church built over Golgotha, says that sign is the Cross, shining in the sky ahead of the King. “The sign of the Cross shall be a terror to His foes; but joy to His friends who have believed in Him” (15.22). Many Fathers shared this reading.
- For now
- The Cross the catechumens were learning to trace on themselves is the same sign that will announce the Lord's return. What is foolishness to the world now will then be seen as glory.
“Every prayer of yours, every Psalm you sing is recorded…”
- Teaching
- Cyril's picture of the judgment is meant to encourage. Nothing done for God is lost: prayers, psalms, alms and fasts are all remembered. At the judgment “an angel's trumpet shall summon us all to bring our deeds with us.” And “Out of your own conscience shall you be judged,” for “you shall rise clothed with your own sins, or else with your righteous deeds” (15.24–25).
- The Church's teaching
- Christ, who is the Truth, will lay bare each person's conduct and the secrets of the heart (CCC 678–679, 1039).
“Flee therefore the one, the False one; and look for the other, the True.”
- Teaching
- The lecture ends where it began, with Christ. Having defended the Creed's words that his kingdom “will have no end,” Cyril tells his hearers to keep the signs of the end in mind, remaining “unsubdued by Antichrist,” and to “be conspicuous in good works, that you may stand with a good confidence before the Judge.”
- Why unfolding
- Watchfulness, as Cyril teaches it, is not anxious scanning of the news. It is a life of faith and good works, lived every day toward the One who is coming.
Cyril's own cautionCyril hands on the Church's teaching with confidence and her silence with equal care. He gives the signs; he will not give the time: “as to the time let no one be curious” (15.4). Where he adds details from his own reading of Daniel and Paul, such as the rebuilt Temple, he grounds them in Scripture, and this site presents them as his opinion, not as the Church's teaching.
For reflection
Whom would I hand this on to?
Cyril told new Christians to teach what they had learned to their children. Is there someone in my life, a child, a godchild, a friend, with whom I could share the hope of Christ's return, simply and without fear?
Sources
- St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (1894), revised by Kevin Knight, New Advent
- Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience on St. Cyril of Jerusalem, June 27, 2007, vatican.va
- “St. Cyril of Jerusalem,” in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), New Advent
- St. Augustine, City of God 20.19, CCEL
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 668–679, 1039
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