Emmanuel makes rough ways passable; Moses’ pedagogy builds Church; one saving day

Cyril: …of joining, of the way of life in spirit and sanctification, unless Emmanuel also is present with him, and sets the things unreachable for humans as passable and horse-ridden. And this, I think, is what has been said through Isaiah’s voice, ‘Every ravine will be filled, and every mountain and hill will be lowered, and all the crooked will be unto a straight, and the rough unto smooth roads.’ (Isaiah 40:4) For in Christ for us also the steep are smooth, and the rough is passable; and bare and level are the hard-to-travel. For also, as the prophet himself says somewhere again, ‘A road of pious ones. It has become straight, and prepared is the road of the pious.’ (Isaiah 26:7) So then necessarily Jesus goes up together with all-divine Moses. For the Father is approachable, as I said, through Son, and he himself is the mediator, joining us through himself, and carrying us up into the heights beyond nature. And he had drawn up with chosen men, and was conquering Amalek. For Christ, having chosen the saints, of whom the all-divine disciples have become firstfruit, has conquered the ruler of this age; and Moses was the one commanding; for the Son has come to be under law, though existing as lawgiver as God. And the time of the battle-array was not being practiced according to that very day on which Moses’ words came to be, but unto the tomorrow—that is, unto a putting-off of another time. For the law foretold the things that would be, and has a bright narration of the Savior’s achievements, if it should be thought spiritually. In this way then, as I myself somehow think, Moses also raised the holy tent. For the pedagogy through law unto the constitution of the Church is not unhelpful. For it pedagogues unto Christ, who is the head of the Church, and the whole constitution, pillar and foundation of the truth, according to what has been written. And indeed Christ has addressed Jews: ‘If you were believing Moses, you would also believe me; for concerning me that one wrote.’ (John 5:46) So then Moses also builds—that is, the pedagogy through law—the Church of Christ, still showing beforehand as in shadows the mystery upon it. And Moses’ person sometimes presents the law through him, according at least to what has been uprightly said in Gospel parables, ‘They have Moses and the prophets.’ (1 Timothy 3:15)

Palladius: You have spoken uprightly.

Cyril: And what again would the needing on day one wish to signify, and indeed also the new-moon of the month the first, and the needing for the holy tent to be pegged in the second year—come then let us say, tracking the true, and what seems to hold most excellently for those who will meet it. For day the one shows beforehand for us the much-prayed and saving time, according to which the Only-begotten having become human acquired those upon the earth for God and Father by the death of his own flesh. And one is the time of this of all; for having died once, he no longer dies; death will no longer lord over him, according to the Scriptures; for we will not still expect the Son to die for us ourselves and for the spirits in Hades, nor yet (Luke 16:29) (Romans 6:9)