Commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Sermons 111-125

These sermons from the fifth century capture one of the church's most formidable theological minds at work in pastoral mode. Cyril of Alexandria, the fierce defender of orthodox Christology who would later be crowned 'Pillar of the Faith' at Chalcedon, turns his piercing intellect here to the Gospel According to St. Luke, working through passages that grapple with the deepest human preoccupations: wealth and its spiritual dangers, the persistence of prayer, the radical inversion of worldly hierarchies. Here is the famous parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that searing portrait of chasms that cannot be crossed, followed by teachings on faith like a mustard seed, on healing the ten lepers, on the widow's relentless petition before an unjust judge. Cyril reads these texts with the precision of a man who has spent decades untangling the mystery of divine and human nature in Christ, yet his purpose here is not abstract theology but the nourishment of souls sitting in his congregation. His style is dense, argumentative, saturated with scripture, yet punctuated by moments of surprising tenderness. For students of early Christian thought, for those seeking to understand how the church fathers preached, or for anyone drawn to the theological depth possible in sermon form, these pages offer a window into a mind that shaped the faith's contours for centuries to come.