Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – The Holy Father Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis at the Wednesday General Audience on June 17, held in St. Peter's Square, to Saints Cyril and Methodius, “brothers of the same parents and in the faith, known as the apostles to the Slavic people.” Recalling their history, the Holy Father recalled how Cyril was born in Thessalonica in 826-827, the youngest of seven children. At age 14, he was sent to live in Constantinople to receive an education and be introduced into university subjects. After having rejected a brilliant matrimony, he decided to receive holy orders and became the librarian in the patriarchate. Shortly afterward, wanting to retreat from society, he hid himself in a monastery, but soon was discovered and entrusted with teaching sacred and profane sciences. In the meantime, his brother Michael (born around 815), after a career in public administration in Macedonia, abandoned the world around the year 850 to retreat to monastic life on Mount Olympus, in Bithynia, where he received the name Methodius.
Attracted by the example of his brother, Cyril also decided to leave teaching to dedicate himself to meditation and prayer on Mount Olympus. Years later (around 861), the imperial government entrusted him with a mission among the Khazars of the Azov Sea. Cyril, accompanied by his brother Methodius, lived for a long time in Crimea, where he learned Hebrew. Arriving in Constantinople, the two brothers were sent by Emperor Michael III to Moravia, to teach the Christian principles to the people of the area, who had abandoned paganism, in their local language. Their mission was soon met with success: they won a great sympathy among the people, but also the hostility of the Frankish clergy, who had previously arrived to Moravia and considered the territory as belonging to their ecclesial jurisdiction. To justify themselves, in the year 867, the two brothers traveled to Rome, where they were received by Pope Adrian II. “The Pope intuited that the Slavic peoples could carry out the role of bridge, contributing in this way to conserve unity between the Christians of both parts of the Empire. Therefore, he did not hesitate in approving the mission of the two brothers in the Great Moravia, welcoming and approving the use of Slavic in the liturgy,” Benedict XVI highlighted. While in Rome, Cyril became gravely ill and thus, wanted to consecrate himself totally to God as a monk in one of the Greek monasteries of the city, taking the monastic name of Cyril. He then pleaded with his brother Methodius, who in the meantime had been consecrated Bishop, not to abandon the mission in Moravia and to return to those peoples. He died on February 14, 869. The following year, 870, Methodius returned to Moravia and Pannonia (today, Hungary), where he again faced the violent ill-will of the Frankish missionaries who imprisoned him. When, in the year 873, he was liberated, he actively dedicated himself to the organization of the Church, attending to the formation of a group of disciples. The merit of these disciples was in overcoming the crisis that broke out after the death of Methodius, which occurred April 6, 885: “Persecuted and imprisoned, some of these disciples were sold as slaves and taken to Venice, where they were rescued by a functionary from Constantinople, who permitted them to return to the Balkan Slavic countries. Welcomed in Bulgaria, they were able to continue the mission began by Methodius, spreading the Gospel in the 'land of the Rus.' God, in his mysterious providence, in this way availed of the persecution to save the work of the holy brothers. From [this work], literary documentation also remains.”
Summarizing the spiritual profile of these two brother Saints, Benedict XVI highlighted above all “the passion with which Cyril approached the writings of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, learning from him the value of language in the transmission of Revelation... Wanting to imitate Gregory in this service, Cyril asked Christ to speak in Slavic through him...Actually, already years before the prince of Moravia asked Emperor Michael III to send missionaries to his land, it seems that Cyril and his brother Methodius, surrounded by a group of disciples, were working on a project of collecting the Christian dogmas in books written in Slavic. Then it was clearly seen that there was a need to have new graphic signs that were more adequate for the spoken language: Thus was born the Glagolitic alphabet, which modified later, was designated with the name 'Cyrillic,' in honor of its inspirer. This was a decisive factor for the development of the Slavic civilization in general. Cyril and Methodius were convinced that the various peoples could not consider that they had fully received Revelation until they had heard it in their own language and read it with the characters proper to their own alphabet. To Methodius falls the merit of ensuring that the work began by his brother would not remain sharply interrupted. While Cyril, the 'philosopher,' tended toward contemplation, he [Methodius] was directed more toward the active life.”
At the close of the catechesis, Benedict XVI quoted the Apostolic Letter Quod Sanctum Cyrillum of Pope Pius XI, in which he calls the two brothers as “sons of the East, Byzantines by their homeland, Greeks by origin, Romans by their mission, Slavs by their apostolic fruits,” and the Apostolic Letter Egregiae virtutis viri, in which Pope John Paul II declared them Co-Patrons of Europe, along with Saint Benedict. “Indeed, Cyril and Methodius are a classic example of what is today referred to with the term 'inculturation': Each people should make the revealed message penetrate into their own culture, and express the salvific truth with their own language. This implies a very exacting work of "translation," as it requires finding adequate terms to propose anew the richness of the revealed Word, without betraying it. The two brother saints have left in this sense a particularly significant testimony that the Church continues looking at today to be inspired and guided.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 18/06/2009)
