Transcript

Our speaker this evening was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on May 12, 1984, and received a Master's of Arts degree in Sacred Theology, Summa Cum Laude, the same year.

In 1992, Father William P. Saunders received a Doctor of Philosophy in Education and Administration from Catholic University of America.

He has served as president and dean of Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College and pastor at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia, until 2000 when he was appointed as the founding pastor of Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church in Potomac Falls, Virginia.

Besides offering a number of great presentations at the Institute of Catholic Culture, we do have at least one pinch of incense in the CD rack that you could pick up afterwards.

He is also a member of the ICC Advisory Board and a close friend of the Institute, a strong supporter since the very beginning.

So please join me in welcoming Father Saunders.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very good.

So, let's begin with a prayer in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, as we meditate on the teachings of the Council of Ephesus and the great work especially of Pope St. Celestine and also St. Alexander, St. Cyril, and so many others, may we always be mindful of the gift of our Savior Jesus Christ, whom you sent into this world to perfectly reveal your truth and love and to suffer, die, and rise for our salvation.

May we also remember the great gift of our Blessed Mother Mary, the Holy Virgin, who, free of all sin, gave of herself for your plan of salvation.

We ask all of this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.

Our Lady of Hope, pray for us.

And Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

So I was asked to talk about the Council of Ephesus and the official title, Mary, Mother of God, which to some extent we as Catholics sort of take for granted.

But I remember back when I was in the seminary, so this goes back to the early 80s, some of my classmates from Philadelphia came down to visit.

They were going through Washington.

I wanted to show them old St. Patrick's Church, which is up near the FBI building.

It was on G Street.

It still is there.

It's one of the oldest Catholic churches in Washington, just right up from Ford's Theater.

So we go in, and I noticed in the little vestibule before you go into the church was written on the wall in pencil, "Catholics, God has no mother."

No. Well, that's awful that somebody would write on a church wall, for one thing.

But then I thought, obviously the person doesn't understand the title, Mother of God.

And that's the key.

Many people, if they really don't understand the Trinity, and they don't understand the mystery of the Incarnation, they're not going to understand that title, Mother of God.

So this was the problem that we faced in the early church.

Now, before we actually move into the council, we have to set our stage because that's very important.

So, set the stage.

The time of the early church we know is the time of persecution.

And Diocletian, the emperor who ruled until 305 officially before abdicating, waged the last, the final, but also the worst of all the persecutions.

When he abdicated, he set in place this, what he called a tetrarchy.

So, you really had two now emperors.

There was one in the east, located in the city of Byzantium, which later becomes Constantinople.

Today, it is unfortunately called Istanbul.

And then there's the emperor in Rome.

Each one had a helper called a Caesar.

So, that's the way it's set up.

Well, in the year 312, there's a power play.

Who is going to succeed, especially in the West?

Well, Constantine, who's serving in England, is elected by his troops to become the emperor.

Now, Maxentius wants to take the throne because his father, Maximian, had been the emperor.

So, there's this clash.

Constantine moves down from England, crosses through Gaul over the Alps into Italy, and there, outside of Rome at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, they have a clash.

Constantine wins.

He becomes the emperor.

The good part of this is that in the year 313, Constantine legalizes Christianity.

So this doesn't mean it's the state religion.

It means that he's legalized it.

So now we can come out of the catacombs, out of the homes, and have a public church.

So that's something that's very good.

Now the second part is that we still have two capitals going on here.

The capital in the west is Rome.

The capital in the east will become now Constantinople.

So with that, as time goes on, by the end of the 300s, especially during the time of Emperor Theodosius I, who was a friend of St. Ambrose of Milan, Christianity now does become more the official religion of the empire.

So much so that one cannot serve in public office, or like a senatorial role or anything like that unless you are a Christian.

Pagan practices, so public pagan practices, pagan sacrifices are now outlawed.

Many of the old pagan temples are turned into Catholic churches.

So this is what has happened in the Empire.

So that's the first thing to sort of remember the dynamics going on.

The second thing to remember is that by the late 300s, by about the year 370 in the West, the barbarians are coming down.

And that changes the dynamics of the western side of the Roman Empire.

So, for instance, first of all, the Visigoths come down.

They ravage the Roman Empire.

They take over the Balkan Peninsula.

Then we have the Burgundians crossing the upper Rhine.

They move over into Gaul.

Then there are the Franks that cross the lower Rhine.

They move into parts of Gaul, too.

Gaul is now France, okay?

Franks, France, we have the picture.

The Visigoths come from Poland and eastern Germany.

They move right across into Spain, and by 430, they're crossing through the north of Africa.

Poor St. Augustine's on his deathbed, and the Vandals are outside the city of Hippo attacking the city.

So what happens here is that the western side of the old empire is really deteriorating.

It's not as popular or prominent now as the eastern side of the empire.

Constantinople is still a fortified city.

It's still able to protect itself, and we go on from there.

Now, the problem here, and this is just more of a political problem, one has to think, well, here's the pope, bishop of Rome in the west, and the west has deteriorated.

The patriarch of Constantinople is in the east.

And the East still stands.

The patriarch starts thinking, you know, I ought to be the head of the Church.

I have more power, more prestige, and this old guy in Rome, he's got a deteriorating empire.

A real power struggle begins to occur.

But beyond that, in the East, you have three or two other prominent patriarchs that are offended by the patriarch of Constantinople.

First, the patriarch of Alexandria.

He is the successor of St. Mark.

And then you have the patriarch of Antioch, who is the successor of St. Peter, because St. Peter was the first bishop of Antioch.

And then you have this guy, Constantinople.

Well, who's he?

No apostle founded Constantinople.

It's a political position.

So even within the East, there's this political struggle, in a sense, as to who has the real authority here.

But always keep in mind, even by this time, without question, the Bishop of Rome is the successor of St. Peter.

And he's recognized as having that authority.

Now, that brings us to another point, and that is the mystery of Christ.

Well, now that the Church has come out of the catacombs, out of the homes, the Church can come together publicly and deal with issues that have caused problems.

And this deals with who Jesus is.

Now, of course, we have what we call our sacred scriptures.

We have our Gospels and so on.

So they knew, as Matthew and Luke record especially, that Mary was full of grace.

She received the message of the archangel Gabriel.

She conceived by the Holy Spirit.

And through her, Jesus Christ entered this world.

We believe that.

And then St. John takes it a little bit further.

So if we go to the prologue of St. John's Gospel, we read, "In the beginning was the Word," the capital W, Word.

So, God the Father, His perfect expression, His Word.

So, joined together in this infinite, perfect union of love that's personified in the Holy Spirit.

So St. John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was in God's presence, the Word was God."

Skip down to verse 14. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of an only Son, coming from the Father, filled with enduring love.

We believe that Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is one in being with the Father, consubstantial, who entered this world, true God becoming true man.

St. John also writes in his first epistle, chapter 4, "This is how you can recognize God's spirit.

Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God.

Well, every spirit that fails to acknowledge him does not belong to God.

Such is the spirit of the Antichrist."

So here we have this fundamental belief that Jesus is true God who became true man.

But the real question is, how do you express it in words?

How does it happen?

What does it mean to say Jesus is true God and true man?

What is it to say Jesus became flesh?

So, setting the stage some more, we have in the earliest history of...

You know, this podium is cursed for some reason.

It's been problems all night.

So anyway, never mind, Father Hezekiah.

I'll get back with you later.

So, early church.

312 legalization already.

We have two heresies.

They're problematic.

One is Arianism.

So Arius...

Arius denied the divinity of Christ.

Arius said that Jesus is a creature.

God created Jesus.

He's the first and foremost of all creatures.

But Arius denied the divinity of Christ.

But then you have the docetists, who are, you say, a subsect of what we call the Gnostics.

If you ever hear that term Gnostic, because it was very popular a few years ago with the Da Vinci Code, the Gnostic Gospels, and so on, they were crazy.

They're truly heretics.

They believed in this dualistic system of God versus the devil, whom they considered equal players, and everything spiritual was of God and good, everything material was of the devil and bad.

And therefore, when we look at our humanity, this body, this physical being is bad and the soul is like a prisoner in the body.

And so the Gnostics denied, for instance, the sacraments because how could God work through material things to bring grace?

That's absurd.

Or the Gnostics denied the value of marriage because why would you bring children into this world and enslave souls and bodies?

And the greatest act of religion for them was suicide, because that way you released the soul from the body.

They're crazy people.

So whenever you hear that term, they're crazy.

And the Gnostic Gospels, remember this, always remember this, that the earliest accounts of them are about the year 150. They're bogus.

They use the names of apostles like Peter and James and so on to append to these writings of theirs, but they're heretical, and they were condemned by the Church, and that's why they aren't included.

So whenever you hear something like even National Geographic talk about, oh, the Gospel of Judas and so on, and whatever, the Catholic Church excluded these for good reason.

For good reason.

Because our canon, when you think of our New Testament, we had it by the year 70. It's there.

And all those writings are included because they are attributed to those authors.

Be that as it may.

So we have these docetist Gnostics that say, well, Jesus appeared as human.

He's divine.

He only appeared as human.

So they deny the humanity of Christ.

So the Church comes together in the year 325 at the Council of Nicaea to deal with these two heresies.

And they produce what we call the Nicene Creed, which we recited at Mass this morning.

And you'll notice it's very specific.

So taking the Apostles' Creed, which is attributed to the Apostles about the year 70, 80 at the latest, the first earliest records, we now have the Nicene Creed that specifically says that for us men, for our salvation, he came down from heaven and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.

We also have preceding this that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.

So here we have the Council of Nicaea defining that Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity.

He is true God who became also true man.

And the word here for consubstantial is homoousios, the same substance, the same stuff, the same divinity as the Father.

Jesus is fully divine, yet he is distinct from the Father.

Now, the Council of Nicaea stopped in the original creed with, "and we believe in the Holy Spirit," period.

Time would go on.

In 381, we have the second ecumenical council, and that is at Constantinople in 381. They affirm Nicaea, but then they continue on with the Holy Spirit.

At this time, there's another heretical group called the Numata Machi, the haters of the Holy Spirit.

So, they want to get rid of the third person of the Holy Trinity.

So, the council declares that heretical, and so we now have the last part of our creed.

That's what we have at Mass.

So at this time, we have some great players: St. Athanasius, who is a bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, a staunch defender of the Trinity, and we also have St. Hilary of Poitiers, who's in the West, a staunch defender of the Holy Trinity.

They take sacred scripture, they elaborate it through theology, and so we have our tradition trying to teach, as best we can, clearly, our faith.

So, we've set the stage, so to speak.

Now, the question here is, how?

How does it happen?

How does true God become true man?

So we affirm he is.

How?

So here we are, now getting ready for the Council of Ephesus.

So, enter the stage, St. Cyril of Alexandria.

Little background: born in 376, dies in the year 444. He's known as the Doctor of the Incarnation.

He was also known as the guardian of exactitude.

He is, in the Syrian and Maronite rite masses of our church, commemorated as, quote, a tower of truth and interpreter of the Word of God made flesh.

He was also a great scripture scholar, so he wrote commentaries on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, the prophets, particularly Isaiah, the Gospels of John and St. Luke, and also the Psalms.

He also was a great teacher of the patristics, so he had the writings of the different church fathers.

So he had all of this knowledge, and he knew that he had to teach in accord not only with what is in the scriptures, but what has been handed down as the faith.

Again, we see the interaction here between The Word of God, the Bible, sacred scripture, and the sacred tradition.

That consistent teaching, handing on of the faith.

Now, going back.

Saint Cyril, and this is important for good old Catholics to remember, was not perfect.

So sometimes we think saints are saints.

He was not perfect.

He was called bold and hard.

Now, he was a deacon.

He served for his uncle, who was the patriarch of Alexandria.

It's always nice when your uncle's the patriarch.

And his uncle governed Alexandria from 385 to 412. Historians always use the phrase, "with an iron hand."

So, he has a classical education.

He is then elected as the successor of his uncle in the year 412. Now, with that, it is written that Saint Cyril was a man of great learning and purity of private life, but like his uncle, bold and hard.

Now, he preaches against different heresies, such as the Arians that keep on popping up, against the Novatians who really denied forgiveness of sin for mortal sins, against the Jews at the time who were causing troubles against the church in Alexandria.

He preaches against the Roman governor because the Roman governor is also against the church.

So he was a tough character, sort of a firebrand, but nevertheless a great scholar.

Now the great patrologist, Ernest Simmons, now deceased, wrote, in short, he was a strong man, a born ruler, a willing fighter.

If he had any faults that belonged to such a character—hastiness, lack of sympathy, obstinacy—he had also in full measure the drive, initiative, and zeal that can get a difficult job done well.

Tempered by a genuine love of God and his church, and a real concern for the welfare of Christian men and women, his character and God's grace made a man who, though he might not be greatly loved, was mightily respected by his own and succeeding generations.

Alright, we have Saint Cyril.

Here's what happens.

Year 429. There is the patriarch of Constantinople named Nestorius.

Nestorius was a monk.

He lived in solitude for the great majority of his life.

Because there was a dispute over who should succeed the deceased patriarch of Constantinople, Theodosius II enters in and says, "I will appoint Nestorius, this monk, from this monastery outside of Antioch."

So Nestorius comes down.

Now, Nestorius asks the question, "How did Jesus, the Son of God, become man?"

Well, in many ways, that's legitimate.

The problem was how he came up with the theory.

So, Nestorius.

We'll have Nestorianism here.

Nestorians believed that there is the divine person, Jesus, who has a divine nature.

So here we have one person.

Then there's another person.

There is the human person, Jesus, who has a human nature.

This is a separate person.

And the story is said that what happens is that the divine person Jesus, whom he calls the Word, is coming into this world and dwells in the human person Jesus, whom he calls the Christ, and his phrasing is, "...as if a person dwelling in a temple."

So you have two persons going on here.

Somehow you have, it does get into a problem of language, but you have this divine person of Jesus somehow just being popped into Mary.

And Mary gives birth to baby Jesus the Christ, but not the Word of God.

Now Nestorius says what happens at this time is, then we have this big...

prosopon.

That's his term, prosopon.

In the order of grace, he calls it sublime.

So it is unique and sublime.

It's a unique figure, this prosopon.

So somehow, again, Mary gives birth to human Jesus, a human person Jesus with a human nature, the Christ, but it is the divine person Jesus with the divine nature of the Word who somehow is totally separate gets put into him, into the human part.

Just again like someone dwelling within a temple.

That's his phrasing.

And we have this unique figure that he calls a prosopon.

Okay, so far so good.

So, Nestorius said, therefore, Mary is the mother of Christ, Christokos in Greek, but she is not the mother of God, Theotokos.

Alright, it causes a big problem now, because the union then is simply accidental.

And one has to think then, who dies on the cross for us?

Well, Nestorius would say, well, it's not the divine part of Jesus.

It's simply the human part.

Who suffers for us?

It's only the human side.

Who's the one who goes through all those pains of this life?

Only the human side, not the divine side.

Well, then we have to ask the question, how could Christ really be our Redeemer?

There's the key.

How could Christ really suffer for us?

How could he elevate our humanity to something even better than Adam and Eve had?

So it really gets complicated.

And the wording is played around with so it can be very subtle.

It can also be very seductive.

Now, Nestorius does want to preserve the idea of these two natures, divine and human, but the problem is that he kept the two natures into two persons rather than somehow joining them.

So St. Cyril comes along and he says, this is heretical.

Why?

Because St. Cyril goes to the sacred scriptures, and we know, Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, and through her Jesus Christ, true God became true man.

St. John, again, wrote, the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

It wasn't the Word person got popped into the human person.

No, the Word became flesh.

So, St. Cyril says we look at sacred scripture, but also, Cyril said, we look at the titles.

And the title Mother of God was spoken of by St. Ignatius of Antioch in the year 100, St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century.

St. Ephraim, the great scripture scholar, St. Alexander of Alexandria, who is at the Council of Nicaea, St. Athanasius, who is at the Council of Nicaea, the Mother of God title has been accepted all this time in our sacred tradition.

How can Nestorius now say she's not the Mother of God?

Big problem.

What's ironic, too, is in the Mass of St. John Chrysostom, who was the patriarch of Constantinople two times before Nestorius, Nestorius was using the language that St. John wrote, and that is this.

This is the language from their Mass in the Eucharistic Prayer.

It is truly just to proclaim you blessed, O Mother of God, who are most blessed, all pure, and Mother of our God.

We magnify you, who are more honorable than the cherubim, and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim.

You who, without losing your virginity, gave birth to the Word of God.

You who are truly the Mother of God.

So that's their Mass, the wording of their Mass in the Eucharistic Prayer.

And Nestorius, who's saying those words, is now saying, now she's not the Mother of God.

And St. Cyril says, this is bizarre.

It's heretical.

So, where do we go from here?

Well...

St. Cyril gets further infuriated because he hears that a priest named Anastasius preached in front of Nestorius at the cathedral in Constantinople, and he preached, quote, "Let no man call Mary Mother of God.

She is only human, and God cannot be born of a creature."

All right, so St. Cyril is really mad.

So he writes to Nestorius.

Nestorius receives the letter with contempt and haughtiness.

So in his Easter encyclical in 429, Cyril denounces Nestorius.

And Cyril writes, "It is essential to explain the teaching and interpretation of the faith to the people in the most irreproachable way and to remember that those who cause scandal, even to only one of the little ones who believe in Christ, will be subject to unbearable punishment."

He continued on, "Thus we affirm that the natures are different that are united in one true united person.

But from both has come only one Christ and Son.

So one person, one divine person, true God who became also true man.

One divine person who has a divine nature who also takes on a human nature."

Continue.

"Not because due to their unity the difference in their natures has been eliminated, but rather because divinity and humanity, reunited in an ineffable and indescribable union, have produced for us one Lord in Christ and Son."

And so again, Cyril is emphasizing Jesus, second person of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father.

He is a divine person who has a divine nature, and in the mystery of that incarnation, true God becomes true man.

He takes on that human nature.

Very important, fundamental belief of our church.

Now, in 430, Cyril writes a second letter to Nestorius.

This is in February.

But he also writes to Pope Celestine, Pope Saint Celestine I, and includes a dossier of evidence against Nestorius.

In the second letter, Cyril writes, "For we do not say that the nature of the Word became flesh by undergoing a change," Nor that it was transformed into a complete man made up of soul and body.

Rather, we affirm that the Word, having united to Himself, according to the hypostasis, the flesh animated by a rational soul, became man in an ineffable and incomprehensible manner and was called Son of Man.

So here's a mystery.

It's incomprehensible that...

a Divine Person with divine nature is united now to a human nature, which is body and rational soul.

This union is not merely according to the will or to good pleasure, nor does it consist in the assumption of a prosopon only.

So this mysterious thing, this figure that Nestorius came up with, the prosopon.

And though the natures which are brought together into a true unity are distinct...

from both there results one Christ and one Son.

Not as though the distinction of natures were suppressed by their union, but rather because the divinity and the humanity, by their mysterious and ineffable coming together into unity, have constituted for us the one Lord Jesus Christ.

He continues, "...it was not that an ordinary man was born first of the Holy Virgin, on whom afterwards the Word descended."

So this divine person popping into this human person.

What we say is that being united with the flesh from the womb, the Word underwent birth in the flesh, making the birth in the flesh His own.

Thus, the Holy Fathers have unhesitatingly called the Holy Virgin Mother of God, Theotokos.

This does not mean that the nature of the Word or His divinity received the beginning of its existence from the Holy Virgin, but that since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word united to Himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word was born according to the flesh."

So here, Mary.

Mary does not create the second person, the Holy Trinity.

No. But Mary does conceive by the Holy Spirit.

And Mary gives flesh to the divine person with the divine nature.

So in that sense, since Jesus is true God who became true man, we can rightfully call Mary mother of God, not mother of the Father, not mother of the Holy Spirit, not mother meaning she created the divine person Jesus like he didn't exist before the conception.

No, that she's the mother of Jesus, true God, who became true man.

All right, now, with that, St. Cyril said that if we don't hold this true, we shatter the mystery of our redemption.

Recall what St. Paul said in Hebrews chapter 4. Since then we have a great high priest, meaning Jesus, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our profession of faith.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who is tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned.

So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and favor and to find help in time of need.

How beautiful that is.

Now think about it.

The beauty of our faith is that we have a Savior.

A Savior, true God who became true man, who endured all the things that we do in this life, who endured the sufferings that we face, who endured death, but conquered death through the resurrection.

We have Christ who faced temptation, but showed us he is stronger than any power of the devil, and with him we can be too.

So we have this beautiful Savior.

Now if we look at Nestorius, we don't have that Savior anymore.

We don't have true God who became true man, one who can understand us.

And think about this too: Jesus came to elevate our fallen nature to something greater than what Adam and Eve had.

We should never forget that.

This is why in the Easter Vigil Exultet, we proclaim, "O happy fall of Adam that gave us such a Savior."

Because of Jesus.

How beautiful is it that we have Christ who has elevated our human nature to even greater dignity.

Now with that, we could look at, even at Mass, when the priest adds the water into the chalice.

So the little bit of water, the drop into the chalice, he says, "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

So Christ, because of that mystery of the incarnation, has enabled us to become like brothers and sisters in the Lord.

And the Heavenly Father looks upon us through the eyes of the Son.

He looks upon us through the Son.

So, we have something even better than Adam and Eve.

Now, enter Pope Saint Celestine.

So, Pope Saint Celestine was born in Campania, Italy, studied under Saint Ambrose in Milan, was a deacon in Rome, and during the time of Pope Innocent I, he was elected Pope on September 20, 422. Now, he fought against Pelagianism, which denied the need for grace.

He's a friend of St. Augustine, with whom he corresponded.

It's interesting that he also sent St. Palladius and missionaries to Ireland to evangelize the Irish.

It is believed that towards the end of his life, Pope Celestine sent St. Patrick to Ireland in 432. St. Prosper of Aquitaine said, quote, "St. Celestine saved the Roman island," meaning Britain, "for the faith, and to the barbarous island," meaning Ireland, "brought the light of Christ."

Just a little fun for St. Patrick's Day.

So, he restored in the Church of Rome many of the churches, like Santa Maria in Trastevere and others.

He embellished many churches with beautiful artwork.

But having received the dossier from St. Cyril, in Rome, he now convokes a synod, and this happens in August of 430. At the synod, Pope Saint Celestine condemns Nestorius.

He also entrusts to Saint Cyril to be his official representative, to write to Nestorius, to give him, upon receipt of this letter of condemnation, ten days to recant and to repent.

If Nestorius does not repent within 10 days, then he will be disposed.

So he's really entrusting great power to St. Cyril.

Now, one reason why.

Keep in mind, what's happened?

The barbarians.

Pope St. Celestine can't get on the boat and come over there.

Not so easy.

So he's entrusting this to St. Cyril.

So St. Cyril writes a third letter with the ultimatum to Nestorius, and he adds 12 anathemas.

We'll look at four.

One is that Mary is Theotokos, mother of God, because she brought forth after the flesh the word of God.

If you don't believe it, anathema sit.

You're condemned.

The word has been personally united to the flesh.

The same person is both God and man.

If you don't believe it, anathema sit.

The human and divine and the one Christ cannot be divided nor connected merely by common dignity, authority, or rule.

If you don't believe it, anathema sit.

And then lastly, the word suffered, was crucified, tasted death, and rose in the flesh.

If you don't believe it, anathema sit.

So, with that...

We really have now the whole mystery of this hypostatic union.

That Jesus is a divine person, the second person of the Holy Trinity.

He has a divine nature.

In the mystery of the incarnation, he takes on fully a human nature.

This is the hypostatic union.

Two natures, one divine person.

Now, these natures are not to be confused, divided, separated, or changed.

That's going to come up in the next Council, 451 Chalcedon.

But we'll leave that for another time.

December 430, Nestorius received the letter, and now we have Emperor Theodosius enter the scene.

So Emperor Theodosius II was emperor from 408 to 450. He was the emperor at age 7. So you figure, he's not running the empire at age 7, is he?

No, his mom is.

And his mother was always very influential, Empress Eudoxia, and she had real problems with St. John Chrysostom.

So, leave that as it may.

So Emperor Theodosius receives all these reports, and he decides, well, we're going to convoke a general council.

So, November 19, 430, he says we will have a general council at Ephesus.

It will meet on Pentecost Sunday, June 7, 431. Celestine, Pope Celestine approved, would send legates.

Now, the problem is, most of the church can't attend because the West has all the barbarians.

And North Africa has all the barbarians.

So it's predominantly going to be eastern church bishops, the eastern side of the church, who are going to be meeting at Ephesus.

Like St. Augustine can't attend.

Of course, he's dying at this point, but still he's got the barbarians outside his walls.

So on June 22, 431, the council comes into session.

It's attended by 200 bishops.

St. Cyril is the representative of the Pope.

He convokes the council.

It met in the Church of St. Mary.

How appropriate.

Ephesus, remember, was the home of our Blessed Mother Mary until the time of the Assumption.

So, St. John the Evangelist and Mary Magdalene care for Mary there.

I've never been to Ephesus, but archaeologically, they do have what is believed to be the House of Mary still there.

They have the Basilica of St. John, and they have the Basilica of St. Mary, which used to be the Temple of Zeus.

Now, unfortunately, except for the House of Mary, this is all ruins because of the Muslims.

So be it.

But anyway, it's there in Ephesus.

Now, so we have the convocation of the council.

The problem is that not all the bishops had arrived, especially those from Antioch.

So, now, some of the bishops accused Nestorius of blasphemy, stating they heard him say, quote, "Nestorius could not call God a baby suckled by the Virgin, nor believe in a God two or three months old."

Blasphemy.

So the bishops decreed, quote, "and every priestly assembly."

197 bishops signed the document.

They also informed Nestorius, quote, "...to Nestorius, new Judas, know that by reason of your impious preachings and your disobedience to the canons, on the 22nd of this month of June, in conformity with the rules of the church, you have been deposed by the Holy Synod, and that you now no longer have any rank in the church."

There you go.

So, now the council affirmed that belief.

Jesus is a divine person with a divine nature and a human nature.

The hypostatic union.

And for that, Mary is rightfully called the Mother of God.

And they wrote, "Mother of God," not in that nature of the word or his divinity received from the beginning of its existence from the Holy Virgin, but that since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.

When the council fathers announced that Mary is the Mother of God, they were greeted by the people of Ephesus, in this beautiful exclamation of applause, and they had a torchlight procession.

So it was wonderfully received.

Now, another important point.

Cyril relates this then to our belief about the Holy Eucharist.

And Saint Cyril wrote, "Proclaiming the death according to the flesh of the only begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, and confessing his resurrection from the dead and ascent into heaven, we celebrate the bloodless sacrifice in our churches, and thus approach the mystic blessings, and are sanctified by partaking of the holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ the Savior of us all."

And we receive it not as common flesh, nor as the flesh of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of merit, or as having a divine indwelling, but as really the life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself."

Now, think how beautiful that is.

You know, when we say that we receive the Holy Eucharist, we believe that we are receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord.

That in this very beautiful sacrament, we are mysteriously sharing in the life of Christ.

Now, if we follow in this story, one has to think, what would we be receiving?

Just bread, maybe.

That would be about it.

Well, maybe we'd be cannibals.

I don't know.

But if we look at Nestorius, we've just denied even the mystery of the Holy Eucharist.

So Jesus, when he gave to the apostles at the Last Supper that beautiful sacrament and said, "This is my body, this is my blood," he was giving his whole self: divine person, divine nature, human nature.

Now, we go on.

So, St. Cyril reported the findings to Theodosius.

Well, June 26, four days later, Patriarch John and the bishops of Antioch arrived, and they protested because they weren't there for this, and so they held their own little council, and they deposed Cyril.

Okay, why not?

And there's a Count Candidian who is in favor of Nestorius, and Count Candidian reports to Theodosius.

So, June 29th, an imperial rescript arrives, annulling the actions of the council.

Emperor Theodosius arrested both Cyril and Nestorius.

Now, in early July, the papal legates finally arrive.

So there is a priest named Philip; he's the chief papal legate, and he presents the documents entitling him as the legate, and so Theodosius reverses his position.

Now, that's important because Theodosius, although emperor, recognizes the authority of the pope.

So he releases Saint Cyril, and he reforms then the council.

So the council meets again, second session, July 10th.

They officially recognize these legates from the pope and the letter of Pope Celestine.

On the third session, July 11th, they affirm the document of the Matheotokos, but they continue on.

Philip told the bishops, "There is no doubt, and in fact it has been known in all ages, that the Holy and Most Blessed Peter, Prince and Head of the Apostles, Pillar of the Faith, and Foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, and that to him was given the power of loosing and binding sins, who down even to today and forever both lives and judges in his successors."

The Holy and Most Blessed Pope Celestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place.

And us he sent to supply his place in this holy synod, which the most humane and Christian emperors have commanded to assemble, bearing in mind and continually watching over the Catholic faith.

For they have both kept and now are keeping intact the apostolic doctrine handed down to them from their most pious and human grandfathers and father of holy memory down to the present time.

So what is proclaimed at Ephesus too is a recognition of papal primacy.

That Pope Celestine is acting in the person of Peter who holds the keys.

And they recognize this.

And Theodosius does.

And so we move on.

Fourth and fifth sessions, July 16th, 17th.

The council held at the Antioch Bishops.

All their little council, that was annulled.

Sixth and seventh session, the Creed of the Council of Nicaea was given preference to all others.

And then finally, Nestorius was condemned officially.

Nestorius was deposed.

He retired to Antioch to his monastery, but was later then exiled to the Egyptian desert.

Nestorius died in the year 450. Council officially ended in August.

Now, all that happened here at Ephesus would be reaffirmed 20 years later at the Council of Chalcedon 451. Now, that's the Council of Ephesus.

So, we learned a lot, really.

So, primarily, we have clarified who Jesus is.

Jesus is the second person of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father.

He is a divine person with a divine nature and, through the mystery of the Incarnation, takes on the human nature, our humanity in all things but sin.

Mary is the Mother of God because Jesus is truly God who became true man.

We also see how important not only is Sacred Scripture, but the consistent relationship with Sacred Tradition of our Church.

So we don't look at something out of context, but rather we look at the continuum of faith, what has been taught all this time.

We also see how there's the importance of the papal primacy.

Pope Celestine, even though there's this problem with what's going on in the West with the barbarians, is still Pope.

He exercises papal primacy, and that is recognized.

So we find a lot of goodness from this Council of Nicaea.

So, postscript.

St. Cyril died June 27, 444. He's given the title Teacher of the World.

He was declared a Doctor of the Universal Church in 1882 by Pope Leo the...

On the 15th centenary of his death, 1944, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical, Orientalis Ecclesiae, this light of Christian wisdom and valiant hero of the apostolic.

Pope Celestine described him as the generous defender of the Catholic faith and an apostolic man.

Pope Benedict, in an address in 2007, October 3rd, one of his audiences, taught this.

The Christian faith is first and foremost the encounter with Jesus, a person who gives life a new horizon.

St. Cyril of Alexandria was an unflagging, staunch witness of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, emphasizing above all his unity.

Jesus, the Logos, born of the Father, is firmly rooted in history because, as St. Cyril affirms, this same Jesus came in time with his birth from Mary, the Theotokos, in accordance with his promise will always be with us.

And this is important.

God is eternal.

He is born of a woman, and he stays with us every day.

In this trust, we live.

In this trust, we find the way for our life.

Another postscript: The Nestorian Church still exists.

It's not very big.

They don't call themselves that.

They call themselves the Church of the East, mostly with people from Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

So a very small community, but technically they're Nestorians.

Another little postscript: December the 9th, 1531, Our Blessed Mother appeared at Guadalupe to Juan Diego.

And in that, she said to Juan Diego, "Know for certain, least of my sons, that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, the true God through whom everything lives, the Lord of all things near and far, the master of heaven and earth."

And so our Blessed Mother attests that she is the mother of Jesus, the true God.

So, we learn much.

So, very good.

Any questions at all?

Perfectly clear?

Thank you.

Thank you, Father.

If you are interested, you can always go to your good old catechism, and beginning with paragraph 464, and if you go all the way through 478, you have a very nice presentation of the teachings of the major church councils, including Ephesus.

So it's right there in our catechism.

And it shows, again, the goodness of sacred tradition.

If you have your faithful Bible and you have your catechism, it's really all you need for faith.

It's all here.

Good.

Thank you so much, Father.

Thank you for the talk, Father.

I'm wondering about some of the things we hear from certain prominent churchmen today.

One I'm thinking of seems to imply that Jesus has to learn things in his public career from others.

They seem to be women.

That's Father James Martin, of course.

And then, too, there seems to be a resurgence of the notion that Jesus never asked to be worshipped, and so we should regard him as, I guess the inference is, someone whose godness was not a matter...

something apparent from his creation.

And I'm a little confused by those, but I guess the question is, would either of those be considered a resurgence of either the Arian or the Nestorian heresies?

I think so, because this is the thing.

There's a mystery here.

Jesus, true God who became true man, divine in human natures.

And Chalcedon said that those two natures cannot be changed, divided, confused, or separated.

So they're there.

But how they interact always, that's what's... the mystery.

So Jesus enters this world.

Well, like any of us, he had to learn how to walk.

He had to learn how to talk.

He had to learn how to be a carpenter.

Those are all human kinds of things.

But as far as did he know who he is, yes.

He knew his mission, but he has the limitations of our humanity.

Archbishop Sheen had a great analogy.

Archbishop Sheen would be like, what would it be like if you, as a human being, had to all of a sudden evangelize the dogs?

And all of a sudden you're in a dog body and you have to bark.

Think of that.

Well, imagine Jesus, true God, the Word, who now has to come into this time and space with our limitations of humanity, this language, and so on.

But it's a mystery.

But never should we say Jesus didn't know who he was.

And then somehow, you know, the apple dropped on his head and all of a sudden he's the Son of God.

No. He knew who he was and he knew what his mission was.

But again, there's the limitations of humanity.

And how do you express that?

Now, the second part to that is the...

What was the second part to that?

What was your second question?

Oh, about adoration.

Jesus didn't need to be asked to be adored.

People did it because they saw who he was.

When you think of those miracle stories, they aren't just, you know, see once again, walk once again.

No, they all bring about faith.

Lord.

People follow.

They recognize him as the divine Messiah.

And if you're a Jew, he's doing everything that the prophet said the Messiah would do.

So Jesus doesn't have to say, "Adore me."

No. People had faith.

And they adored him as such.

And even if we go to the ascension scene, the apostles bow down and adore.

They know who Jesus is.

So Jesus doesn't have to say, "Oh, look at me, please adore me."

No. They recognize him.

Sure.

Any other questions?

Yes, one question over here.

Father, this is kind of, could you tell the rest of the story to clarify?

The bishops that got there late from Antioch, and they were suppressed, but the sessions went on after they were there.

Did they join the program?

They did.

They did join the program.

So they come late, and this Patriarch John of Antioch decides, well, we're late.

You didn't wait for us, so we're going to have our own little council here.

Well, that is suppressed by the papal legates.

And so they then do unite with the regular church council of Ephesus.

And they do support the decrees of Ephesus, too.

They do.

Thank you.