Late antiquity (4th century)
Feast: March 18
The bishop who stood in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and taught new Christians, step by step, what baptism and Eucharist actually mean.
Imagine being baptized in Jerusalem, in the very church built over the place where Christ was buried and raised, and then having the bishop sit you down the next week and explain what just happened to you. That was Cyril's ministry. Around 350 AD, as Bishop of Jerusalem, he delivered a series of lectures to newly baptized Christians that survive almost intact — twenty-three talks that walk through the Creed, the Our Father, baptism, chrismation, and the Eucharist with a directness that still startles. 'You were led to the holy pool of baptism,' he told them, 'just as Christ was carried from the cross to the sepulchre. You were immersed three times and rose three times.' He was standing in the room where it happened. The lectures read like a teacher who loves his students and will not let them be confused. Cyril was exiled three times by Arian bishops who resented his Nicene leanings, spending a total of sixteen years away from Jerusalem. He came back every time. During one exile, the Council of Constantinople in 381 confirmed his orthodoxy. He died in 386, having spent more of his episcopate in exile than in his own cathedral. His lectures remain the oldest complete catechetical curriculum we have, and they are still used in RCIA programs today.