Saint Cyril

Around the year 1169, the mother of the Sultan of Iconium, in Cilicia, who was a Christian at heart, seeing herself at an advanced age and, as they say, on the edge of the grave, revealed her secret to her son and persuaded him to call for the priest Cyril, of whom so much praise was spoken, in order to be instructed by him in the principles of our holy religion. This plan succeeded so happily that, in a short time, the Sultan was perfectly instructed in the elements of our holy faith and sent ambassado rs expressly to Po pape Alexandre III Pope who proceeded with the canonization of Bertrand in Toulouse. pe Alexander III to learn from the Holy See the order he should observe in the reception of holy Baptism. One may see the Pope's response, reported by Cardinal Baronius in the same year 1169, as well as the miracles of the holy Cross, which Our Lord performed following this Baptism, of which our Saint had the honor of being the minister and agent. The following year, he was charged with an embassy to the same Pope Alexander, on behalf of Manuel, son of Komnenos, Emperor of Constantinople, to discuss the means of reuniting the Greek Church with the Latin Church: one sees, by this, in what esteem this holy Priest was held in the Greek empire and in the lands of the Orient.

However, God, who destined him for solitude and wished to make him a Father of a congregation, created an opportunity for him to withdraw from this world and its entanglements, so as to occupy himself only with his own soul and his salvation. He entered into a discussion with the Patriarch of Constantinople, named Theodosius, concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit, who, according to this schismatic, proceeded only from the Father, while the Catholic faith confesses, in its Creed, that He proceeds equally from the Father and the Son, as from one and the same principle. Theodosius, becoming heated in this dispute, exceeded the bounds of modesty and gravity required by the dignity of his character, to the point that he resorted to insults and threats against the holy priest Cyril. The latter, judging it appropriate to yield to the storm, sought in his heart a way to isolate himself from men so as to have dealings only with God. While he was turning these thoughts over in his mind, the Blessed Virgin, whom he had taken as his protectress from his youth, appeared to him at night, with a face full of majesty and shining like the sun, and said these words to him: "My son, if you wish to avoid the per secutions a Mont-Carmel Place of retreat for the hermits for whom the rule was written. nd errors of the Greeks, seek your asylum on Mount Carmel, and follow the path that will be shown to you there." It took no more than this for the blessed Cyril to be determined to sell his goods and give them to the poor: after which he embarked to go to Syria and cross into the Holy Land.

As soon as our Saint entered Jerusalem, he met Saint Broc ard, Prior Ge saint Brocard Prior General of Mount Carmel who welcomed Cyril. neral of Mount Carmel, who, seeing him dressed in a long Greek robe, greeted him politely and inquired about the reason for his coming and what purpose he had in mind: "None other," Cyril replied, "than to do the will of God, and to give myself entirely to Him and to the service of His most holy Mother." Thereupon, the holy Prior took him to his convent on Mount Carmel, and spoke to him, along the way, of the wonders that God had formerly wrought in this holy place through the holy prophets Elijah and Elisha, and how the monastic and religious state seemed to have originated there through them and the other Prophets, their disciples, and that they had always had successors, even in the time of the Blessed Virgin. Indeed, the history of this holy Order asserts that she herself saint Ordre Religious order to which the cited blesseds belong. , visiting this desert, called its inhabitants her brothers; and that, to acknowledge such a favor, they were the first to build a church in her honor on this holy mountain. Cyril, edified and touched by this discourse, felt his heart gradually kindling with the love of this solitude; but he resolved himself to it completely when, entering this monastery, he saw those separate cells and those ancient caves of the prophets all filled with other holy religious, who lived, not in the manner of men who dwell on earth, but rather like angels of paradise. He was confirmed in his resolution by a second apparition of the most holy Virgin, who assured him that this was the place where he should remain to live out of danger. Therefore, the very next day, he asked for the holy habit and received it to the great contentment of all the religious, who promised themselves to see reborn, through the virtue of this novice, aged forty-six, the first fervor of their ancient Fathers. They were not deceived: for, as if he had yet done nothing for God, he began this new life with an admirable exactitude for the observance of the rule and with practices of penance, which he embraced with an ardor beyond all expression.

A few years after his religious profession, Our Lord, not content that he should work only for himself, willed that he should also work for others, and that the beautiful lights He had given him should not remain forever hidden under a bushel, but should spread throughout the house of God. To this end, Saint Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, who is believed to have lived on the holy mountain of Carmel, appeared to him at night, during his prayers, to order him, on behalf of Jesus Christ, to go to Armenia, in order to preach the word of God Arménie Place of the martyrdom of Saint Jude Barsabas. there and to rekindle the light of the Gospel which was almost extinguished there. Cyril communicated this vision to his superior who, having recognized that it was good and came from God, gave him permission to follow it, and assigned him a religious named Eusebius as a companion. These new laborers worked so faithfully in the Lord's vineyard that the entire Armenian nation, and the king himself, embraced the true doctrine and belief of the Church, and submitted to the obedience of Pope Lucius III, in the year 1181.

Ten years passed in such a holy ministry; and then Saint Cyril, seeing the Church of Armenia sufficiently established and confirmed in the faith, retired to his monastery, where God favored him with several heavenly visions. Once, while celebrating Holy Mass on the feast of Saint Hilarion, disciple of Saint Anthony, an angel appeared to him holding in his hand a rod surrounded by lilies, with two silver tablets written in Greek letters, through which Our Lord made known to him several great secrets concerning the future state of the Church, the ruin of the Greek empire, and that of the faith in the provinces of the East; the event has justified these revelations.

The report of so many virtues soon spread throughout the world and reached Cel estine III, Célestin III Pope who confirmed the election of Albert and appointed him cardinal. who was raised to the sovereign pontificate in the year 1191. This Pope, wishing to recognize the merits of the religious Cyril, named him Patriarch of Jerusalem; but the Saint could never bring himself to accept this dignity, preferring much more to obey in the solitude of Mount Carmel than to command in the Church in the midst of a diocese. He therefore wrote to the Holy Father, excusing himself on the grounds of his alleged incapacity and the necessity he was under to work for his own salvation. But the more he thought to hide himself through his humility, the more God revealed him through the power of miracles: he had given a coin to a blind man who was asking for alms; this poor man, knowing that it came from the hand of Cyril, applied it to his eyes out of devotion, and, at that very hour, he recovered his sight. What is even more admirable is that he also received enough clarity in his soul to ask for the religious habit; but his request not having been able to be granted because of the absence of the prior, he conceived so much regret that he fell ill and died after three days. His funeral was held, and, although he had been lying in his coffin for a long time and was recognized as dead, being very close to being buried, he rose again and said in a loud voice: "That the prayers of Cyril had resurrected him, just as his merits had restored to him the sight of the body as well as of the soul."

However, Saint Brocard, General of the entire Order, having happily completed the pilgrimage of this mortal life, all the religious of the Holy Land, assembled on Mount Carmel for the election of a superior, cast their eyes upon Father Cyril, even though he was seventy-one years old: and, despite whatever resistance he could offer, he was obliged to bow under the weight of this dignity and to take up the government of the entire Order. One would have said that he was only beginning his novitiate, so much did he redouble his initial fervor: he diminished nothing of his prayers, his fasts, or his austerities; he was always the first at all the exercises and all the duties of a religious. He prayed particularly, and with great zeal, for the preservation of his Order, of which Our Lord had made known to him the great persecutions to come; he even knew that the Christians, as punishment for their sins, would be shamefully driven from the Holy Land by the infidels, and the religious with them; so that Mount Carmel would become a true desert, depopulated of its holy inhabitants. But God, who does not abandon his elect in their afflictions, consoled his servant Cyril with a vision of his most holy Mother, who appeared to him for the third time, and said to him "that in a short time several great personages from various provinces would enter the Order of Carmel; that it would multiply by this means, and that subsequently the monasteries and the religious, being favored by the graces of heaven and strengthened by apostolic authority, would spread throughout the world, to the great advantage of the faithful." This has been accomplished since and is still being accomplished every day.

During the seventeen years that he governed his Order, in the capacity of third General of the Latins, he always displayed a fervent love for Jesus Christ, an extreme charity toward his brothers, a sovereign prudence, and an admirable humility in all his conduct; finally, laden with years and merits, broken by old age and overwhelmed by illness, after having devoutly received the Sacraments of the Church in the presence of his religious, and having holily disposed of all the affairs of his salvation, he peacefully rendered his soul to God, on March 6, 1224, at the age of 98. There is, however, a diversity of opinion, as much for the year of his death as for his age, and for the duration of his generalate; but we leave the examination of this to the authors of his Order.

His holy body was buried in the chapel of the Blessed Virgin, alongside those of the blessed Berthold and Brocard, his predecessors, and Our Lord manifested the glory he possesses in heaven through very great miracles that were performed at his tomb. It is noted, among others, that a young man who was traveling from Cyprus to the Holy Land, having died on the ship, the pilots gave his body to the religious of Mount Carmel to bury; but they, while a grave was being prepared, carried him to the tomb of the blessed Cyril, and suddenly, like the dead man of old whom the fear of the thieves of Syria caused to be thrown near the bones of Elisha, he began to revive and to say in a loud voice 'that Cyril had resurrected him and reserved him for a better life.' Indeed, he became a religious and remained for twelve years in that same monastery. This great Saint wrote several excellent works; among others, a treatise entitled: of the Angelic Or acle; a book on the a de l'Oracle angélique Work written by Saint Cyril. ntiquity and progress of his Order, with epistles to various persons. Besides the chronicles and martyrologies of the Carmelite Order, several writers, worthy of belief, have spoken of this holy Confessor, such as Trithemius and Aubert Miraeus, and the authors of the Gallia Christiana; finally some others, whom the Rev. Fr. Jerome of Saint-Jacques, a Discalced Carmelite religious, did not omit in the collection he showed us of the events of his life.