Monday, May 22 : Saint Cyril of Alexandria

As the firstfruits of our renewed humanity, Christ… trampled death under foot and came to life again, and then he ascended to the Father as an offering, the firstfruits, as it were, of the human race… Christ is symbolized in another way by the sheaf of grain the Lord required Israel to offer in the Temple (Lv 23,9), as a brief explanation will show. The human race may be compared to spikes of wheat in a field, rising, as it were, from the earth, awaiting their full growth and development, and then in time being cut down by the reaper, which is death. The comparison is apt, since Christ himself spoke of our race in this way when he said to his holy disciples: “Do you not say: Four months and it will be harvest time? Look at the fields I tell you, they are already white and ready for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving his wages and bringing in a crop for eternal life” (Jn 4,35-36). Now Christ became like one of us; he sprang from the holy Virgin like a spike of wheat from the ground. Indeed, he spoke of himself as a grain of wheat when he said: “I tell you truly, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains as it was, a single grain; but if it dies its yield is very great”. so, like a sheaf of grain, the firstfruits, as it were, of the earth, he offered himself to the Father for our sake. For we do not think of a spike of wheat, any more than we do of ourselves in isolation. We think of it rather as part of a sheaf, which is a single bundle made up of many spikes. The spikes have to be gathered into a bundle before they can be used, and this is the key to the mystery they represent, the mystery of Christ who, though one, appears in the image of a sheaf to be made up of many, as in fact he is. Spiritually, he contains in himself believers. “As we have been raised up with him” writes Saint Paul, so “we have been enthroned with him in heaven” (Eph 2,6-7). He is a human being like ourselves, and this has made us one body with him (Eph 3,6), the body being the bond that unites us. We can say, therefore, than in him we are all one, and indeed he himself says to God, his heavenly Father: “It is my desire that as I and you are one, so they also may be one in us” (Jn 17,21). Thus the Lord is the firstfruits of humanity destined to be stored in heavenly barns.

maronite readings – rosary,team