I spent almost an hour fussing with the buckle or whatever it's called on the shoulder strap of my overalls, tsk; I felt like an idiot but did eventually figure out how the strap and the two metal parts work together and what goes where. I then proceeded to make it all come apart again as I attempted to adjust the strap's effective length. I put the other pair on and went about my morning at that point. Am eating eggs and left over cheesy potatoes for breakfast, before Terce as it happens. Holy Mass for Saint Cyril, Bishop and Patriarch of Alexandria and Doctor of the Church (CE, Introibo, Wiki) will be streamed from Saint-Eugène at 1000.
I'm streaming a performance of the Nash Ensemble from Wigmore Hall; I was set to listen at 1130 and of course it didn't happen then but since it shows up now in the 'Video Library' it must have happened at the morning hour. Dvořák's Piano Concerto in E flat and Schubert's Quintet D 667, 'The Trout'.
The Blessed Ildefonso in his Liber sacramentorum.
This feast was instituted in 1882 by Leo XIII, who chose this day because January 28, on which date the saint’s name appears in the Martyrology, is already assigned to another office. The name of St Cyril immediately evokes the memory of those celebrated early sessions of the Council of Ephesus, when, through the agency of Cyril, the most splendid pages of the doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary were recorded. Nestorius having thrown doubt upon the dogma that in Jesus Christ there is only one person, it consequently resulted from this heresy that there could no longer be bestowed upon the Blessed Virgin the title of Mother of God, by which the faithful until then had been accustomed to invoke her. The whole Eastern world was soon in a turmoil because of the negations of the arrogant Bishop of Byzantium; whereupon Celestine I (423-32) called a Council at Ephesus, of which Cyril—the spiritual heir of the former Pharaohs at Alexandria—was the guiding spirit. The examination into the Catholic tradition concerning the unity of person in the twofold nature in Christ was diligent and thorough and was continued far on into the night. When at length the Fathers, having anathematized Nestorius, decreed that the Blessed Virgin was rightly called Theotokos or Mother of God, because in Jesus Christ the human nature was hypostatically united to the Word of God, the people of Ephesus, delirious with joy, accompanied them back to their dwellings with torches, and with thuribles filled with precious perfumes. The most famous monument at Rome recalling the triumphs of our Blessed Lady at the Council of Ephesus is the Basilica of St Mary Major, in which Sixtus III, the successor of Celestine, caused to be represented in mosaic the most important events in the life of our Saviour and his blessed Mother. The Byzantines keep the feast of St Cyril on January 18 and also on June 9. In their Meneia the saint is praised because he was considered worthy to take the place of the supreme Pontiff Celestine as president of the Council of Ephesus... The Mass of St Cyril is that of the Common of Doctors as it is for St Francis de Sales, on January 29, with the exception of the proper Collects, in which allusion is made to his special merits in the triumph of the doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary over the Nestorian heresy at Ephesus. The composer of these prayers, however, seems to have had a too one-sided idea of Cyril’s theological action. The Nestorian heresy was chiefly christological and the error regarding our Lady was merely a consequence of it. St Cyril strenuously defended the honour of the Mother and the Son, fearlessly represented the Pope, and by his famous anathemas became, in the eyes of the Eastern Church, the most authoritative upholder of orthodoxy against the Nestorians. Such was the respect in which Cyril was held in olden times, that even to this day the Monophysite Copts, distorting the meaning of his formulas on the unity of person in Christ, quote this holy Doctor in support of their error. The Greeks are in the habit, not only of giving to Cyril the honourable title of 'Pope of Alexandria' [they honor each of the Patriarchs in the same way, ahem, or do in the 21st century anyway-- M], but also of representing him with a tiara, and relate that St Celestine conferred these marks of honour upon him when he delegated him as president in his stead at the Council of Ephesus. The merits of St Cyril obtained for his successors in the patriarchal See of Egypt the title of which they boast to this day: orbis terrarum judex, judge of the entire world....
What the Blessed Abbot and Archbishop is clarifying is that the venerable theologian Saint Cyril is the profound defender of the unity of Our Lord's one Person in his two natures, divine and human, the most practical spiritual and pastoral consequence of which, from the one point of view, is that the Deipara is and remains Theotokos, Mother of God. He seems not to have been the most irenic of spirits, and of course the Alexandrian Church later withdrew from communion with Rome into a sort of Monophysitism. Still.
Ante Nonam. I'm finished eating a bowl of soup for dinner. It tasted fine, a low sodium chicken vegetable supermarket own brand from a can, but the substanceless pieces of overcooked carrot and celery were pretty useless, quite superfluous really-- another hour simmering away in the five hundred gallon pot at the Own Brand Factory would surely have eliminated visual evidence of those vegetables' presence: better by far without 'em. No one is asking me, however.
LDVM
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