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This month's extract from the Divine Office is taken from the Office of Reading for Monday of Eastertide week 7 (the Monday before Pentecost). It is another instruction to catechumens, this time from St Cyril of Jerusalem. St Cyril was made Bishop of Jerusalem around 349AD He was made a Doctor of the Church in 1883 and is noted for his series of twenty four instructions of which nineteen are called Catechetical Letters (CL) and five Mystagogical Catecheses.
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The extract is taken from CL16. 'The water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.' This is a new kind of water, living, welling up, welling up for those who are worthy. Why did he call the grace of the Spirit water? Because all things depend on water. Water produces herbs and living things. Water comes down from heaven as rain: water always comes down in the same form, yet its effects are manifold -thus it takes one form in the palm-tree and another in the vine; it is in all things and takes all forms, though it is uniform and always remains itself. For the rain does not change, coming down now as one thing and now as another, but it adapts itself to the nature of the things which receive it and it becomes what is appropriate to each. Similarly with the Holy Spirit. He is one and of one nature and indivisible, but he apportions his grace as he wills to each one. When the dry tree is watered it brings forth shoots. So too the soul in sin: when through penance it is made worthy of the grace of the Holy Spirit, bears the fruits of justice. Though the Spirit is one in nature, yet by the will of God and in the name of Christ he brings about multiple effects of virtue. He uses the tongue of one man for wisdom, he illumines the soul of another by prophecy, to another he imparts the power of driving out devils, to another the gift of interpreting the sacred scriptures; he strengthens the self-control of one man, teaches another the nature of alms-giving, another to fast and mortify himself, another to despise the things of the body; he prepares another man for martyrdom. He acts differently in different men while himself remaining unchanged, as it is written: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.' His approach is gentle, his presence fragrant, his yoke very light; rays of light and knowledge shine forth before him as he comes. He comes with the heart of a true protector; he comes to save, to heal, to teach, to admonish, to strengthen, to console, to enlighten the mind, first of the man who receives him, then through him the minds of others also. As a man previously in darkness, suddenly seeing the sun, receives his sight and sees clearly what he did not see before, so the man deemed worthy of the Holy Spirit is enlightened in soul and sees beyond the power of human sight what he did not know before.
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